A West Berbice teen hung himself with his belt around midday on Sunday at his Lot 186 Experiment, Bath Housing Scheme home.
Desiree Evans, his mother, was downstairs in the hammock and made the gruesome discovery after not getting any response from the boy when she called out to him from the hammock downstairs.
Mukesh ‘Jermaine’ Persaud, 17, had retired to his bedroom to have an afternoon nap on Sunday. According to his mother, “he came in the hammock with me downstairs and the last words he told me were ‘mommy, Trevor [his brother] carry the wheelbarrow; must tell he to bring back the wheelbarrow’ and then I went and bathe”. The boy left for his room upstairs, while she showered in the bathroom downstairs.
After she called him and received no answer, she decided to venture upstairs but noticed that the door was locked. “The door was bolted and I continued calling and I heard no response; I thought he was watching TV and I continued to call and then I peeped through the window and pulled the drapes from the step”.
Upon glancing to the roof of the bedroom, “all I saw, I see him from the roof top, spinning like this and I started to holler and called for my other son”. Persaud was discovered hanging from the roof of his bedroom, tied with his belt. Her other sons came to the scene, “and when they come they saw him hanging from the roof top, he cut his belt— he had a canvas belt and he cut it— and he took one of his father’s shirt and rest it on his bed”.
The police were summoned and they took statements and removed the body. “I told them there was no problem and they said not to hold him and they took a cutlass and cut him down from the roof”.
She stated that she never expected such a tragedy to happen; “if anybody did tell me like that, or someone had told me before that my son would have done something like that…I would have come upstairs to see and stopped him”
He was a “good boy; he don’t interfere with nobody and was very nice to everybody”. He was a mason, she said.
Persaud is survived by his father, Vicky who works in the interior and brothers Trevor and Romen.
