The body of an employee of the National Communications Network (NCN) was on Thursday night discovered at the back of the building face-down inside a drain.
Dead is Deonarine Dhanpaul called Derick, 44, of 447 South East Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara.
Dhanpaul was employed as a handyman at NCN and was only recently confirmed as a permanent employee.
Stabroek News understands that a security guard who was doing a routine check of the premises discovered the body lying in a drain sometime before 11 pm on Thursday and alerted others who were on duty at the time. A ladder was said to have been found a short distance from where his body was discovered and it is believed he fell to his death.
This newspaper was also told that at the time no one was able to identify the man as they were advised not to touch the body.
When this newspaper visited his home the dead man’s relatives were preparing for a wake and many neighbours had already converged to pay their respects.
The man’s mother Leila Dhanpaul said she was asleep at her home in Industry Housing Scheme when staffers of NCN arrived around 2.30 am yesterday and informed her of her son’s death.
“When they told me I was shocked and right away my other son went to tell he wife,” the woman said. The woman said the staffers also told her that the body was found at the back of the building.
Dhanpaul’s wife Vedo said she last saw her husband alive on Thursday when he left for work at 6 am. She added that he had worked at NCN for three months and would “help out with anything” around the premises; he usually left work at 3 pm and would arrive home by 3.30 pm.
Vedo said that when he did not get home at his usual time she thought that maybe he had gone to shop for groceries because he had collected his salary, or had worked late. But as time passed, she said, she figured that he had probably stopped to have a drink with a friend. However, as it grew late she began to fear the worst.
Thoughts of him being robbed and left helpless ran through her mind, she said, but her son told her not to think negative thoughts. She said she had not yet gone to sleep when she got the news of his death just after 2.30 am yesterday.
Yesterday, Vedo could not come to grips with how her husband died and she recalled viewing his body clad in blue work overalls covered with grass and with more grass clasped in one of his hands.
She could not understand why it took hours for her husband to be found. The woman said Dhanpaul had not even eaten his lunch.
Vedo said she was told that he might have taken a ladder to do some work on the building and might have fallen off the ladder and died. She said she saw dried blood on his nose and ears and his face had marks.
They were married 24 years ago, Vedo said, adding that about week ago he became very quiet and had promised to stop smoking and drinking. NCN, relatives said, promised to help with his funeral arrangements.
Dhanpaul’s body is at the Lyken Funeral Parlour and a post-mortem examination is expected to be conducted on Monday.
