The news that 21-year-old Shaquawn Alleyne allegedly killed his 20-year-old fiancé, Shonette Dover, sent the mining town of Linden in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) in shock and Dover’s grandmother, Constance Dover, said the revelation feels like a “stab in the back.”
In the wee hours of Friday, the partly decomposed body of Dover was found in a shallow grave in Alleyne’s backyard in Canvas City, Wismar Linden. According to police reports, Alleyne allegedly shot her and buried her in his backyard in the presence of his father and Dover’s 15-year-old sister sometime on April 3, 2021 – the last day she was seen alive. Police subsequently issued a wanted bulletin for the man.
“They (the Dover family) ain’t behaving nice at all ‘cause this is a shock, it is a stab in we back. This is cutting the dirt under we feet ‘cause we never expected nothing like this,” the victim’s grandmother told the News Room on Friday after the body was found.
According to the grandmother, Alleyne had joined several search parties for Dover after the young woman’s family and friends realised that she went missing on April 3. On Sunday last, he also joined a march in the community, which was organised to raise awareness on the missing woman.
Constance said that the young man had even visited the Dover family home subsequently and engaged them as per normal. Since the march on Sunday, however, she noted that no family member saw the man.
In a Facebook post on April 6, some three days after Dover’s family and friends realised that she disappeared and after he reportedly killed her, Alleyne wrote: “anybody with info I begging (you) to please come forward I willing pay any amount of money just know that she is fine.”
In that same post, he pleaded with her to make contact with her loved ones if she was “out there”, adding that everyone was “worrying sick”. But all this time, Alleyne had allegedly already killed her and buried her in his backyard.
Constance did not know much of the relationship between her granddaughter and Alleyne but she recounted that the two got engaged on Dover’s birthday last year.
“When it was the birthday before this one, he carry she somewhere for her birthday and he go and engage her but he didn’t tell us. It was a surprise,” the grandmother said, explaining: “Wherever they went out for the birthday and then we see she come with the ring on the finger… the family wanted to be informed.”
Dover and Alleyne had been living together at his Canvas City house since then. Her 15-year-old sister had also moved in with them subsequently.
The News Room understands that Dover received some money from her brother earlier in the day of April 3. Later in the afternoon, she was scheduled to work at the bar in Greenheart Street, where she is employed. She, however, never turned up for work.
Dover’s grandmother said that the 15-year-old sister is assisting with investigations into the matter; the father of the suspect remains in police custody.
