ONE OF the two sniffer dogs now prowling through Tivoli Gardens, west Kingston, is just back from the Middle East – Iraq to be precise – to help the Jamaican police in their quest to find buried bodies there.
Ever since a body with multiple gunshot wounds was unearthed in a section of the troubled community, a frantic search has been on in earnest for more corpses. Recon, a golden retriever, spent nine months in the war-torn country of Iraq. Now he is in the island with his six-and-a-half-year-old doggie pal called Spirit, a Labrador retriever, since Wednesday of this week.
Both were on the hunt for bodies, which may be buried in the abandoned railway complex in a section of the Tivoli Gardens community. The area was a picture of desolation when the Gleaner visited yesterday.
Search continues
The shallow grave in which the body was found in the aftermath of the Tivoli Gardens incursion, was still evident amid the burnt-out vegetation.
Spirit and Recon have not yet unearthed anything of interest to members of the Major Investigations Task Force (MIT), but the search will continue next week.
Spirit was put to work in Haiti in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake that devastated sections of that country.
When a Gleaner team approached Hilda Wood and Melissa Ellis, owners of the mutts, in the woods of an abandoned section of Tivoli Gardens called Railway, the dogs had taken a break along with their mistresses and were frolicking. But don’t take their frolicking ways at face value. The dogs can sniff out a dead rat, if their fame is anything to go by.
Two-week stay
They will be in Jamaica for 14 days, but Ellis seems willing to stay beyond that time line. “Who’s to tell? Anything can happen,” she smiled.
Ellis has worked for nine months with American Canine.
“I am also a firefighter with the FEMA Task Force, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” said Ellis. The Americans seemed to have possessed much faith in Recon and his owner, whom they sent to Iraq. Recon, certified by the National Narcotic Detector Dog Association, for the past year and a half, was sent to Iraq to locate missing American soldiers.
Both Wood and Ellis, who are in Jamaica for the first time, have owned the dogs since they were eight weeks old.
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