Twenty-nine-year-old Shawn Easton, known as “Shawnee,” a labourer of Swan Village on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, has lost his life allegedly after being struck by lightning.
The incident reportedly occurred at sometime between 15:30h and 16:00h on Sunday in Swan Village. Easton’s common-law wife, Sharon Calistro, spoke to Guyana Times on Wednesday and explained that her husband was returning home from work when an unexpected and intense downpour, accompanied by thunder and lightning, engulfed the area.
Calistro mentioned that she last spoke with her husband at about 15:26h while she was at her mother’s place with their three children.
“After he called me and said he reached home, I informed him that I would be there as soon as the rain stopped. I also reminded him that I left the keys where we usually keep them, as we only have one key,” Calistro recounted.
During the heightened rain activity, she said, a strong lightning flash caused a knife she was holding to pitch out of her hand, and other people in the vicinity experienced similar effects.
She said, “When the lightning flashed, I was cutting up greens for my mother, and the knife pitched out of my hand. The electricity was cut off as well. Is today [Wednesday] we get back current. Someone else in the area got injured too; they were slammed into their fridge when the lightning struck.”
As soon as the rain stopped, Calistro said, she hurried back home, but her husband was nowhere to be found. She said she initially thought he might have lied about being at home.
“When I reach, I tell my children that he was lying, that he said he was home and he wasn’t home. I started looking over at his uncle and I see his uncle walking up and down. So, I tell them children let us go and bathe and so until he comes.
“I went and pick up the bucket and so and we went to the creek to bathe. The creek is not far from where we live. When we reach, I see his bag and his slippers floating in the water, when I go closer, I see him lying face down in the water, so I thought he drowned or something.
“I jump in the water and I raise his head up and his tongue was out his mouth, so I know he was dead. I started hollering, and his brother and everybody come”.
Easton’s body was later retrieved from the water, and his wife said it was apparent that he had sustained severe burns on the right side of his body, from his head down to his knee. It was only then Calistro said, that she connected the dots and realized that the lightning strike must have been responsible for the tragedy.
She told this publication that losing her partner in such a sudden and heart-wrenching manner has been devastating for her and her family.
“We were together for 12 years. He was a very hardworking man. I can’t even sleep or stay in the house, because the pain is unbearable. This is very hard,” she expressed with deep grief.
