A Victoria toddler drowned a short distance away from his home yesterday after wandering away unnoticed.
Dead is three-year-old Ryan Skeete of 357 East Sideline, Victoria Village. He went missing around 9.30 am and an hour later his body was fished out of a trench. No one saw when the child walked out of the yard, crossed a dam and ended up at the trench where he drowned.
According to relatives who were at home with Ryan and several other children, “one minute he was there and the next he was gone”. One relative said that the child usually played in the yard and would venture out occasionally but only after he got permission. She said that yesterday he did not ask anyone.
Malika Skeete, mother of the dead child, said yesterday that words could not describe her feelings. Ryan was her youngest and according to her, he was a sensible child who listened to her. She found it hard to believe that he had wandered off but according to her, “he might have been called home”.
Skeete works as a fruit vendor in the city and was in Georgetown when she received a call urging her to go home immediately. The woman said she sensed that something was wrong and after enquiring for a while at the park was eventually told that her baby had drowned.
She said the minibus transporting her to Victoria took extremely long but when she arrived home her son’s lifeless body was lying on a bridge. The hearse later showed up and took him away.
Information from relatives was that the child slipped out of the yard and went to trench. He might have fallen headlong into the trench and would have therefore been unable to call for help. After a long and frantic search for the child at homes in the area and around the area someone suggested that they search the trench. A resident went into the trench and after a short while surfaced with the child.
Skeete said they are living in a yard where other houses are and that persons outside the family home would also keep an eye on Ryan and her other children. Yesterday he was being watched but it took a short while before they realized he had wandered off.
