Seven-year-old Quacy Miggins has been confirmed drowned as a result of Friday afternoon’s speedboat mishap in Linden, while two other persons are still missing.
The boy’s body was found floating around 1 pm yesterday in the vicinity of the
Mackenzie/Wismar Bridge. Scores of residents including family members of all three persons had been pacing the waterfront from very early yesterday morning. Up to press time, large groups of persons were still converged at strategic points along the Demerara River.
Among those present when the body was found, was his mother Pear St John, who had also been a passenger of the boat at the time of the incident. The woman stood listless, watching as her son’s body was fished out of the river. “She already cry her soul out,” a bystander said. “I am so sorry for her to know that she couldn’t do anything to save her child. This must the hardest thing she must have experienced in her life.”
Miggins was a pupil of Regma Primary and lived at Old Kara Kara, Mackenzie, Linden.
Still missing and feared drowned are Kishana Hollingsworth, 20, of 387 One Mile Wismar, Linden and Lovely Lass Village and Melinda Duggan a 12-year-old first form student of the Mackenzie High School Linden and resident of Block 22, Wismar Linden.
According to eyewitness Marlon Sullivan the boat, property of the Linden Community
Policing Group, was approaching the landing when the captain, Oscar Giles, made a rash turn which resulted in the boat capsizing. There were approximately 14 passengers on board.The man said Miggins was with his mother. Sullivan said he attempted to save the child but was unable to release him from his mother’s grip. “She holding on pun he thinking is somebody else so she son end up going under she by she belly and when I dive and go for him I did not see him so I had to end up holding she and pulling she in.”
St John was subsequently rushed to the Linden Hospital Complex.The incident occurred after the Watooka Club’s annual fun day on Friday. Chief Executive Officer of the Linmine Secretariat, which manages the Watooka Club, Horace James said that at the time of the incident all river activities organized by the Watooka Club had ended.
“What I learnt is that when Oscar (the captain) went to check on the boat, a group of patrons begged him to take them for a ride and he obliged them and this is what end up happening. But we were officially finished with the service of that boat and it was docked,” James explained.
James said he learnt that two of the missing persons were wearing life jackets at the time. The life jackets were recovered floating in the river. There were others who were not wearing life jackets. The captain is still in police custody.
According to Melinda Hollingsworth, she and her sister Kishana had left their One Mile home to visit the hospital and then decided to go to the Watooka Club’s fun day. Once there, Hollingsworth and her cousin, Duggan, a first form student of the Mackenzie High School, opted to go for a ride on the boat.
Malcolm Forde, a cousin of Hollingsworth and Duggan, drowned last December at the Watooka Club swimming pool.
