A 23-year-old man of Zambia, Black Bush Polder lost his life when the tractor he was driving toppled in a rice field and pinned him around 1 pm on Tuesday.
Reports are that Royian Munroe’s body was only retrieved from the water some two hours later when the tractor was removed.
His mother, Esther Munroe told Stabroek News that her son was trying to turn the tractor in an abandoned rice field close to the dam when it ended up in a deep spot and toppled.
The tractor belonged to his younger brother, Ronell Munroe, 21 whom he had gone to assist to plant his seven and a half acres of rice.
They were on their way home when tragedy struck. Esther said Royian was unable to turn the tractor on the dam because of its condition and decided to do so in the rice field instead.
His younger brother looked on helplessly as the “front of the tractor lift up and flipped straight over” and Royian disappeared under it. He is still in a state of shock over the incident.
She said Ronell tried frantically to get help for his brother. He made several phone calls but most of the other tractor owners he contacted were not available.
Other youths who turned up to assist ended up running about 10 miles to the public road where they finally located a tractor.
According to Munroe, her older son, Selwyn would normally drive the tractor but he could not go with his brothers on Tuesday because “he had to service a combine.”
The woman said she was only informed about the incident around 4 pm because “everybody busy trying to get him out from under the tractor and with the excitement they forgot about me.”
She recalled that when two members of her church visited and “they told me ‘something happened and we come to tell you’ I knew it had to be in backdam.”
The woman who described her son as a “dutiful child,” said she held onto her tummy and cried and asked which one of her sons had died.
