The bodies of three schoolboys missing since last week were found buried in a sandpit in Aishalton, Deep South Rupununi late Saturday.
Dead are Mark Thompson and two other students identified only as Adrian and Chad, all first form students of the Aishalton Secondary School. Two were 11 years and the other was 12 years old. The tragedy shook the remote community in the sprawling savannah region and President Donald Ramotar has dispatched a team to the area to investigate. A pathologist is expected to be flown into the Region Nine community today, an official in the region said.
The police are investigating the matter. “Investigations so far revealed that the two eleven-year-olds and one twelve-year-old had left the dormitory of a school at Aishalton sometime on November 27, 2011, and after they had not returned a search was launched resulting in the bodies subsequently being found,” the police said in a statement. A team of investigators is being dispatched to the area, the statement said, adding that no further information was available at the time.
The bodies were in an advanced stage of decomposition and reburied immediately after they were discovered, Stabroek News was told. The Aishalton Secondary School serves a number of Amerindian communities in the South Rupununi and many families send their children to live in the dormitories or board them with villagers in Aishalton. Many were in shock.
Thompson and another boy were from the community of Awarewaunau while the other was from the community of Katoonarib. Reports out of the area said that last week Sunday, the trio, who resided in the dormitory, left the compound to go to the river to bathe. The school has no piped water and while there is a well in the compound from where students fetch water, many opt to walk to the nearby creek to bathe and wash clothes. Residents have in the past expressed concern about these issues.
One villager who was in the community when the discovery was made but has since travelled to Lethem, told Stabroek News that the bodies were in the sandpit close to the Makawau Creek in Aishalton. The section where the children went to bathe is between 500 to 600 metres away from the dorms. The dorms ‘father’, Benedict James was going to the creek at between 9:30am and 10am on Saturday to take a bath and saw a bag projecting from the sand. Upon checking, he saw a portion of a body and raised an alarm. Further checks revealed the bodies of the trio.
It was not clear whether the trio had returned to the dorms after the creek outing on Sunday and the resident said that they had visited a relative in Aishalton on Monday and that was the last time they were seen. Later, it was believed that the trio had gotten away and contact was made with other villages but there was no trace of the boys. Searches were done on Wednesday and continued up to the day of the discovery of the bodies, the resident said. At least two parents wanted to take the bodies back to their home village but it was impossible because of the state of decomposition.
Another Aishalton resident raised the issue of supervision of students. He said that students would normally go to the creek “unattended and unsupervised.” There is one house parent for females and another for males. “It’s a normal thing…on weekends, they run down there and swim and bathe and wash,” he said. The resident said that the sandpit was close to the creek and was used by contractors and villagers and children would visit the location. “It’s a kind of playground,” he said.
Stabroek News was told that there was about 15 to 18 inches of sand covering the youths. Investigations are continuing.
