An 18-month-old girl lost her life and four other children sustained injuries when the platform they were standing on, collapsed at Paradise, West Coast Berbice yesterday afternoon.
Keira Hudson of Linden was pronounced dead at the Fort Wellington Hospital shortly after the incident. Her cousins Gift Leacock aged 3; seven-month-old Anaika Bovell; Nicholas Peters, 7 of Mocha, East Bank Demerara and Nicholay Peters of Number 30 Village were later referred to the Mahaicony Hospital and then the Georgetown Public Hospital in the city.
The children along with relatives were at the time preparing to attend the wedding reception of a relative when the tragedy struck. Leacock came from Barbados with her mother for the wedding.
Rhonda Aulder, 31, at whose house the incident occurred, recounted to Stabroek News that everyone was leaving the house for her brother, Rondel Peters’s, wedding. She said that a car came to pick up her 16-year-old niece Patrina Noble, who was a bridesmaid and about eight adults and five children went out onto the platform to see her off.
Suddenly, she said, they heard a loud noise and the next thing they knew, they were on the ground and everyone was screaming loudly.
The car that went to pick up the teen, ended up taking all of the injured to the hospital, she said.
The dead child’s mother Noella Reynolds told Stabroek News that she was about to lift up her daughter, so she could see what was happening when the accident occurred.
Meanwhile, the child’s grandmother, Oslyn Reynolds, who was the last person to fall, said that she saw Hudson lying at her mother’s feet and everyone else was on top of each other. She recalled that blood was oozing from the child’s nose and ears. When they arrived at the hospital, she said, the child made her last sound.
An uncle, Evan Peters, told this newspaper that he was sitting in the next yard when he heard the loud screaming. The man said that he saw when his niece, Noella, picked up her injured daughter and ran out of the yard. She later called and told him that the toddler had died.
When Stabroek News visited the Georgetown Hospital, the injured children were there with their relatives waiting for their turn to enter the treatment room. Their injuries did not appear life threatening.
While Bovell was given a good prognosis and later left with her mother Roschelle, the others were still at the hospital up to press time last night.
Roschelle recalled to this newspaper that it was around 4:10 pm that the landing collapsed. She said that from all indications the mother of the dead child fell on her.
She said she fell and hit her back but she made every attempt to cushion her child. The infant, she noted night have hit her head on her (Roschelle’s) shoulder bone.
The woman, who travelled from Barbados for the wedding, said that the dead toddler was her cousin. From her recollection, nine of them were standing on the landing when tragedy struck. “We were all dressed and waiting to go to the wedding,” she said.
According to Roschelle, she was in her room but decided to step outside to see the teen, who is her niece, off.
The woman said that after leaving the Fort Wellington Hospital, they decided to take the injured children to the Mahaicony Cottage Hospital to look at the results of an x-ray so that the doctor could determine if they still needed to travel to the city.
She told this newspaper that the doctor refused to look at the results stating that he could not look at it since the referral was for Georgetown and not the Mahaicony Hospital.
According to the woman, it was hurtful to know that despite the tragedy the wedding continued. “Yes they did [continue] and they took pictures too…,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. She added that the groom was the dead toddler’s cousin.
