Mother seeks answers after son dies

… Police investigating death as suicide

The mother of a 19-year-old mechanic is hoping to find some answers for the death of her son, who allegedly killed himself while being questioned by two Policemen.

Tyrell Pershad
Tyrell Pershad

Sherlene Pershad, in an interview with Guyana Times, said she had spoken to her son at about midday on Monday and he told her he wanted her to pick up some documents. She stated that her son, Tyrell Pershad, was picked up from his workplace by two Police Officers and taken to their home at Stewartville, West Coast Demerara, to uplift some documents, and a marriage certificate he had signed with an 18-year-old girl.

“The girl’s mother didn’t like him and she would tell me to keep my son away from her daughter. So the Police come and order him to go and find the documents that he married to the girl and some other ones. I don’t know which documents but he carried them to our house,” she lamented.

The woman said the Police told her that when they reached her home, Pershad went into the house and never came out and when they called for him, they received no answer. “They said they waited 10 minutes and when they called for him, he took a while to answer and after that the Police said he heard a noise that sound like he jump off from a wardrobe and hang himself,” the mother cried.

She said the Police claimed they left after the young man did not return with the documents.

Pershad recalled that when she reached home that evening, she stumbled into her son’s lifeless body which was hanging near the light switch. “When I see him I holler and unbolt the door and run outside,” she said.

“The mat on the ground was in a lump on the floor, things were scattered and a table cloth was pulled down,” she said, adding that she noticed her son’s sandals, which he was wearing on that day, were in the back yard.

“I think that something went wrong in the house,” she said, arguing that her son would never commit suicide.

However, Commander of ‘D’ Division (West Bank Demerara-East Bank Essequibo) Stephen Mansell told this newspaper that the Policemen have given statements in the matter and the Police is investigating Pershad’s death as a “suicide.”

A post-mortem report revealed that Pershad died of suffocation. However, his mother believes something is still amiss. “The report said he died at 1:30pm but I talk to him at 1:18 pm and he was at the Police Station then,” she said, adding that “something is not right”.