Carpenter’s eye gouged out in attack set off by feud

– couple, teen children arrested

A carpenter was beaten unconscious and then had his right eye gouged out in a grisly attack stemming from an ongoing dispute between his teenage son and another boy on Saturday.

Dave Seecharan, 42, of Lot 1638 Ninth Field, Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara, is nursing the gruesome wound at the Georgetown Public Hospital, while the suspect, his wife and their two sons remained in police custody. They are expected to appear at the Sparendaam Magistrate’s Court today.

When Stabroek News visited the injured Seecharan at the hospital yesterday, he explained that he and his 16-year-old son, Karan Seecharan, were walking home at Ninth Street, Cummings Lodge, around 9 pm on Saturday when a youth, with whom his son has had problems with in the past, approached them and snatched his son’s chain from his neck.

“When he did that, I say ‘What happen man? You eyes pass me?’ and I chuck him. Any father would do it. It’s self defence,” the man said. He explained that after that, the boy’s group of friends rushed towards him and his son while the boy himself spoke to someone—suspected to be a parent—on his cell phone. He noted that the boy and his parents live a short distance away from them.

“I been walking to the station and both he mother and father come with cutlass and start telling me that I want money and he father tek a wood and lash me. I left unconscious then they sit on my chest… when I catch myself, I feel the blood running down my face and when I touch it I feel my eye and I hold it up,” Seecharan said.

Also at the hospital was his son, who said that when the boy’s parents approached, they attacked his father while he was chased away with a cutlass. “She (the boy’s mother) help sit on he chest,” he added.

“I thought was he eye top buss but when he raise he head is he whole eye was out,” the boy explained, while noting that he was unable to see what was used to commit the act but was told that it had been a putty knife.

Seecharan explained that his eye has been completely removed since he was told that all the nerves had died. He has undergone two surgeries. “I don’t want compensation. I want they go to jail. Compensation can’t bring back my eye. Dey is nah parents. Dey is animals,” the man said from his hospital bed.

Karan explained that he was involved in a fight with the same boy a while back when he was lashed with a cricket bat. He said the matter was reported and they were required to make a court appearance some time in August.

However, the boy had not turned up to court that day, though other boys who were also involved did. They were placed on a bond to keep the peace for a period of six months. “He de get away from the police and he didn’t go to court. Now when everything done he come back,” a relative said.

Seecharan said his children are not allowed alone on the road after 6 pm and on that evening, he was accompanying his son home after work. “They ain’t allowed to go out and roam the street after a certain time. Is work and home for them. That is how I raise my children,” he stated.