Officials at the Department of Environmental Services are questioning why persons have claimed to live at the former Mayfair Hotel when it does not have the required permits to operate as a housing facility. In the wake of the discovery of a man’s body in an elevator shaft there, Melony McKenzie, director, told The Tribune yesterday that while the Babalu Night club and the Daily Grind Coffee shop operate on the ground floor the rest of the building should not have people living in its rooms. However, passers-by have insisted that small crowds gather atop the lower roof of the former hotel and sometimes lights are seen beaming from its rooms during the evening hours. Mrs McKenzie assured The Tribune that she would be sending a team to investigate the matter.
Concerns surfaced on whether the hotel was still operating after a man, Samuel Whiley, believed by police to be homeless was found already decomposed in the shaft of an elevator on Monday. Samuel’s best friend told police that both he and the victim had either lived in the hotel or in its surroundings for sometime. “Sometimes,” he said, “we used to go upstairs and other times we used to sleep in the back there (pointing to a nearby bushy area).” Previously, the Mayfair Hotel while in operation as far back as 2008, was considered a brothel and was the centre of at least two police raids.
In June of that year, a Jamaican woman was held at the Carmichael Road detention centre after it was believed that she was brought into the country to work as a prostitute at the brothel. According to law enforcement officers, the woman, 23, was flown into the Bahamas but was unaware of what her employment would be. Shortly after she was taken to the Mayfair and greeted by a prostitute who informed her that she would be required to sell her body to survive.
However, on hearing this the enraged woman demanded the return of her passport and a plane ticket. The woman was then forced to escape the premises when the prostitute threatened her with a knife if she did not comply. Later in July an investigation led to the arrest of five suspected male prostitutes. It is said that authorities found the men, between 18 and 20 years of age, dressed in female clothing even right down to their undergarments. More recently in 2010, two Bahamian men and four Jamaican women were taken into police custody from the Mayfair Hotel following reports that a prostitution ring was again up and running. The building is next door to the Fort Charlotte police station.
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