CLASTON Reid said morning prayers with his family last Tuesday before heading out to attend a meeting with a man who had damaged his car in a traffic accident five days ago.

The man had accepted liability so as far as Reid, 56, was concerned. The meeting at the Shell service station at Independence City, St Catherine was to have been a mere formality. From the gas station they would simply have headed to a garage to organise repairs to Reid’s Nissan Sunny motor car.

Reid never returned home. His body was found at a farm at Grange Lane, near Portmore, St Catherine with its throat cut as well as multiple stab wounds.

One man was in police custody being interrogated in connection with the case after he was picked up on Friday night driving what the police said to be Reid’s Sunny along London Avenue, Waterford.

A police detective said yesterday that the detained man is a friend of the man with whom Reid had the accident and was to have met last Tuesday. Police could not say whether there was a connection, but appeared confident about making an arrest soon.

It also emerged from police sources yesterday that Reid, on reporting the accident, may have been advised against settling the case without police action.

“… But Mr Reid being a Christian apparently decided against our advice,” said a police source.

Reid was a senior elder at the Seventh-day Adventist Church at Waterford where they held a special service for his family.

“We are not grieving about (his) death now, we are rejoicing according to the hope of the resurrection of the righteous,” the church’s pastor Desmond Robinson said after the service, attended by 1,500 people.

Among them was Reid’s 22 year-old daughter, Rochelle, one of his three children.

“We had family worship at home, as usual, at 5:30 Tuesday morning and he (her father) presented the state of the accident to God in his prayer and asked God to take care of it,” Rochelle told the Observer.

“Dad left home driving his car at about 7:00 am to meet the man at Independence City Shell gas station from where they would go to the garage for repair estimate,” she added.

Up to midnight her father had not returned and the concerned family reported the matter to the police.

Robinson said that his congregation was “shaken by his tragic death”. “However we are able to look beyond death and anticipate God’s purpose,” he added.

Reid’s wife, Joan, was too distraught to attend church yesterday.

After the service, members gathered in small groups to talk about the man who was part of their congregation for 15 years and was the senior of the five elders.

“I can’t remember ever seeing him in a bad mood,” said Peart Edwards, who knew Reid for a decade-and-a-half. “He was more than a gentleman.”

Edwards was a member of a search party that had looked for Reid and went to the spot when his body was found.

“It grieved me, brother, I can tell you that,” he choked. Tears welled in Edwards’ eyes.

“The church will miss him very much,” said Fitzroy Rose, the chairman of the congregation’s Bible Commission who had worked closely with Reid on a major crusade called Operation Rescue 2000.

“He was here last Sunday night at the end of the crusade and he did a remarkable job,” said Rose. “We are all grieving as a church and from an individual standpoint.”

Meanwhile, Portmore homicide detective, Sergeant Laughton Blackstock, said the man they have in lock-up was being “intensively interrogated”.