A 12-year-old boy is now dead after going under muddy trench water during Phagwa celebrations in the Black Bush Polder (BBP) on Friday.
Dead is Hemraj Ramnauth of Johann South BBP, Region Six (East Berbice/Corentyne).
Reports are that the child left home on Friday morning in the company of a 25-year-old female neighbour and his 7-year-old sibling.
According to his mother, Sadna Ranbarran, sometime after the children had left she received a telephone call stating that her s0n was not being found and she should go.
“I was cooking and I couldn’t leave right away. Hemraj order me to cook also (potato) curry an is that ah was cooking. Then another phone call come and they say that he fine and he dead,” the woman told INews.
Rambarran related she was told by her younger son who was there that several children went into the trench playing Phagwah along with adults. However, they all left, leaving behind the two children.
“He tell me that ‘Takoor’ hold his hand and they go to the deep hole in the trench that the hymac dig and left him and when he see that he tell ‘Takoor” to go and save him ‘Takoor’ say ‘let him die’ and he come out the trench and go way.”
The woman said her son tried to get assistance from adults who were on a bridge nearby but some of them reportedly said that they did not want to get into trouble and the police will have to come.
One man who does not know to swim reportedly went into the shallow part of the trench and using a stuck to feel for Hemraj after he had gone underwater and claimed that he had touched the boy’s body.
Sometime after, two other persons went in and found the body and brought it out.
The 7-year-old said his elder brother took one breath after being pulled from the muddy water.
The grieving mother said when she arrived at the scene, her son was lying on the ground and she opened his mouth and pushed her hand into his throat in an effort to resuscitate him but her efforts were all in vein.
He taken to the Mibicuri Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Rambarran refers to the J.C. Chandisingh Secondary student as being brilliant.
He was the eldest of four children.
