Investigators are expected to exhume the bodies of the three Aishalton School students which were discovered in a sandpit in the Region Nine community on Saturday.
A police source in the area told this newspaper yesterday that investigators are trying to determine the circumstances surrounding the boys’ demise. He said that the investigators may exhume their remains within the next few days and according to him, officials at the school including the dormitory where the young men were staying were being questioned as investigations into the incident continue.
The police stated that the two eleven-year-old and one 12-year-old boys, whose names were given as Mark Thompson, Adrian and Chad had left the dormitory of the school at Aishalton some time on November 27, and after they had not returned a search was launched. Their decomposing bodies were subsequently found.
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. The sandpit where the boys’ bodies were found is close to the Makawau Creek in Aishalton.
The bodies were in an advanced stage of decomposition and were 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.
Ministry of Education officials as well as officials of the Amerindian Affairs Ministry were in the region assisting with investigations yesterday.
