By Sara Bharrat
“If ah didn’t have long hair I woulda dead that day,” Moheal Raul Ramsaywack, victim of the vicious Forshaw Street, Queenstown pit bull attack, said yesterday from his hospital bed in Ward B2 at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).
Last Tuesday the 20-year-old vagrant was scalped by three pit bulls while he was picking mangoes in an empty lot. The dogs managed to enter the empty lot through a hole in the fence.
Ramsaywack was lying with his eyes closed yesterday, deep lines creasing his forehead indicating that he was still in great pain. He was quite willing to talk to this newspaper and said that the dressing for his wounds had been changed a few minutes before.
The young man’s head and both arms were heavily bandaged but his condition seemed to have improved.
Ramsaywack said that he was homeless and he explained that he gathered fruits from trees in open spaces and empty lots. He said that he made a living by selling the fruits and when he couldn’t get any then he worked as a labourer at the Stabroek Market.
In a matter-of-fact manner Ramsaywack explained that he had been homeless for a number of years. “I grow up right here in this hospital,” he said. “My mother left me at the hospital and this nurse tek me in ‘til I was like three year.” The man explained.
He went on to say that his mother came looking for him when he was 3-years-old and he went to live with her. However, he said, when he was 7-years-old he ran away from home and has lived on his own ever since.
When asked why he ran away Ramsaywack could not give an answer. All he managed to say was, “I ain’t know. I just run away. I ain’t see my mother in years and I remember she telling me that me father get shoot in de army. But I does still see de nurse.”
The day before the pit bulls attacked him; Ramsaywack told this newspaper that he’d visited the nurse. He explained that the next day he decided to go into Queenstown to look for fruit trees in empty plots of land.
“I de standing up and picking mangoes de day and next thing you know I see three dogs jumping on me,” he recalled. “I try to get away but I trip on a piece of wire or something and fall down.”
The man remembers screaming for help while the dogs bit at him. “After a while I jus’ give up ‘cause nobody de hearing,” he explained. “I remember everything after that. I remember when dem take me to de hospital. I de screaming out for water. I scream ‘til I de can’t scream anymore but nobody bring water for me.”
He said that he had shoulder length hair and he believes that if it weren’t for his hair causing some difficulty for the dogs to chew on his head then he would be a dead man today.
The owner of the dogs, Joseph Satrohan, Ramsaywack said, has visited him once.
“He come one time and bring some fruit and juice and I neva see he face again,” he said. Ramsaywack explained that when he gave his statement to the police last week he told them that he only wanted Satrohan to compensate him with a reasonable sum of money.
“I got a friend that does come see me every afternoon. She bring me lil clothes and food,” he said. Ramsaywack went on to add that he only knew the woman by seeing her around the Stabroek market area. He said the woman told him she saw the story in the newspaper and knew it was him. Since the attack last week, many residents of Queenstown and citizens countrywide have made pleas for drastic measures to be taken since pit bulls have launched several bloody attacks this year. Ramsaywack’s attack was the latest.
Charles Roopchand, a security guard of 2C Area H, Lusignan, ECD, was killed by a pack of dogs on the Ogle Airstrip road while on his way to work. Later that morning, Desire London, the wife of Bishop Philbert London and resident of 123 Goedverwag-ting, ECD, was bitten on her arms and leg by the same animals.
Earlier this year, full-blooded members of the breed bit two Tucville residents, as well as, two employees of the Guyana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That incident had occurred after a woman in the area was alleged to have loosed the dogs on a group of children.
Last year two pit bulls had attacked a North Ruimveldt jogger, seriously injuring him. He underwent several operations to repair his damaged ligaments and was expected to go abroad for further treatment.
