Hours after recovering the body of miner Michael Leslie, suspected to have drowned in a gorge below the Kaieteur Falls, soldiers were forced to cut it loose in a rapid to save one of their own.
On Monday soldiers were transporting Leslie’s body from the gorge to Tukeit, a three and half hour trek, when the incident occurred, the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) said in a press release last evening. Rope, securing a tarpaulin wrapped around the body, entangled the leg of one of the soldiers as they were crossing a rapid about two hours from their destination.
Both the entangled soldier and the body, the army reported, were being dragged along the rapid and “In order to save the soldier, a decision was taken by the other team members to sever the rope and the miner’s remains” were swept along the rapids and disappeared. The team was able to rescue their colleague.
Several searches were made for the body after the incident on Monday afternoon and those efforts resumed yesterday morning. However, up to press time last night Leslie’s body had not been recovered.
Additional searches, the army said, will be conducted today and will include “civilians who have knowledge of the area”.
Police will also be traveling up river to Mahdia in the case that the body floats past Tukeit.
Courtney Perry, brother of the deceased, is also involved in the search party.
Leslie’s body was discovered at about 1.30pm Monday by a GDF team consisting of two Officers and 12 other ranks at the gorge below the Kaieteur Falls. The army said it was not possible to rope the body to the top of the falls because of its location. The recovery team was forced to place it in a body bag, wrap it in a tarpaulin and fetch it on a stretcher to Tukeit.
Meanwhile, the Police E&F Division says that it is not ruling out anything and investigations will be conducted from all possible angles.
Leslie also called ‘Shortman’, of Lot 328 West Ruimveldt, Georgetown was reportedly missing for about eight days and is believed to have drowned in the gorge below the Kaieteur Falls. Reports had said that the 46-year-old miner was last seen alive on November 29 when he left to carry a relative to the Kaieteur Landing in his canoe.
After the man dropped off his relative, reports said, he left in his canoe to return to his worksite a few miles away.
