The death by drowning of 11-year-old Adrianna Younge in the swimming pool of the Double Day Hotel at Tuschen, EBE has proven to be a cathartic event in Guyana and wherever Guyanese have migrated. The release of grief was expected, since this was the death of a child who had not even experienced what it was to be a teenager. But it was the circumstances under which she died that brought together people of all stripes, who were informed via viral videos.
Adrianna went “missing” within an hour of her arrival at the pool at 1pm on Wednesday, April 23, which she entered along with others. Unfortunately, there were no lifeguards, and Adrianna’s grandmother, who had brought her along with some relatives for an “outing”, moved away from the pool, leaving the children unattended. The authorities should be reviewing our regulations on pool usage and interrogate their enforcement at this hotel. As our economy and living conditions improve, there would be increased usage of swimming pools, and supervision of children by parents and institutions would have to become second nature.
At this point, there is no account that Adrianna could have possibly drowned and her body was still in the pool taken seriously by hotel staff, relatives, and friends who flocked to the hotel after the hue and cry raised over social media. Instead, everyone depended on anecdotal-visual inspections rather than draining the pool, since it is possible that a body lying at the deep end bottom of the 7.5ft pool could not be seen. Even after relatives inspected footage from neighbours’ cameras – since the hotel cameras were not working – and concluded she had not left the hotel, the searches and demands were directed at the hotel rooms, and not the pool.
It would appear that because the hotel owner and an employee had been charged 13 years ago with the murder of a man at the same pool – but were not convicted – it was almost universally concluded that Adrianna had been somehow spirited into the hotel and either kept hostage or killed there within that first hour after arrival. The behaviour of the police, who had been summoned, aided this theory. Firstly, they played a very active role in preventing a search of the premises, even when requested by a minister of government. Secondly, just before midnight, they gave the family very specific details that Adrianna was abducted from the hotel in a Raum; which the latter did not believe, since the neighbours’ cameras showed otherwise. The following day, twenty-four hours after Adrianna had disappeared, the police retracted their assertion. The reason for the misinformation still has not been offered.
On the next (Thursday) morning, around 10:30am, Adrianna’s body was seen in the pool, and this set off an escalation of the crowd’s anger: from blocking the roads with burning tyres and debris, to storming the hotel, in which by then a fire had been set from a fourth-floor room. The owner and an employee were arrested, and the protestors did burn down the owner’s nearby house without the police arresting anyone. The following day, Friday, in what was clearly a planned undertaking, protestors occupied the Public Road in front of the Leonora Police Station with a karahi and fireside, which they placed in the middle of the road and proceeded to cook “shine rice” while completely blocking traffic in both directions. Around 9pm, the police used tear gas to disperse them westwards, where they set fire on the road at several points.
The next flashpoint was on Monday, when the autopsy – conducted by three international pathologists – was performed at GPHC. While some family members witnessed the autopsy, Adrianna’s father remained with the massed crowd that completely disrupted egress from, and entry into, the country’s only tertiary hospital as they took on the police who were attempting to maintain order. Taking advantage of the goodwill generated by Adrianna’s drowning –determined by the pathologists – bands of youth dubbed “Scrapes” created havoc in Georgetown and elsewhere in seeking to paralyse the country. (To be continued)
