A 15-year-old girl died yesterday at the Georgetown Public Hospital where she had been hospitalized after ingesting a poisonous substance in her school’s washroom on Friday.
Dead is Leah Grant, a student of Brickdam Secondary School. Her death triggered chaos in the female ward around 6 pm, as shocked relatives who were visiting her began to scream and cry. Patients and their visitors rushed out of different rooms and nurses scurried around looking to calm them and find guards to remove the crowd gathering around the dead child’s bed.
“Bring her back! Y’all bring her back!” her sister cried, beating at her body and trying to revive her.
Leah ingested the substance on Friday around 1.30 pm in one of the girls’ washrooms in her school.
According to a family member, she was found by a group of girls who immediately raised an alarm to teachers.
She was admitted to hospital and her condition was stabilised late Friday night, a source at the hospital said yesterday.
However, her condition took a turn around midday yesterday. “She was going well but then we noticed that she halfway gone. It was half and half,” the woman said.
“Leah, what you do? Oh don’t do this… Leah dead. Oh God, Leah dead,” a female relative cried, before fainting at the side of the bed.
Soon after, two other relatives fainted. A few other relatives who were going up the stairs to visit her, heard the screaming and rushed up the stairs.
“Oh my God… No this can’t happen,” another relative hollered. Speaking to Stabroek News, this relative stated that the girl was angry because she was banned from having a relationship with an older man.
Leah was expected to write the CSEC examination in May.
Meanwhile, another young woman was listed as critical last night at the hospital after consuming a poisonous substance. She was being treated in the Accident and Emergency Unit at the hospital. She was said to be four months pregnant.
Also, another 15-year-old was rushed to the hospital yesterday morning after ingesting a poisonous substance. However, he was treated and released from the hospital.
There has been an increase in teen suicides recently, marked by three on the Essequibo Coast in the latter months of last year.
On November 8, 17-year-old Shalini Deolall was found hanging with a bed sheet around her neck in her bedroom at her home at Affiance, Essequibo Coast. Her father, Jaglall Deolall, made the gruesome discovery.
On December 5, another 17-year-old girl died at the Suddie Public Hospital, after drinking poison a few days earlier.
Her father, Ramsahoye Rambajue, who was a prosecutor at the Georgetown Magis-trates’ Court, had told Stabroek News that on November 25, he returned home and his daughter showed him a bottle. “It was a green liquid and I suspected it to be poison,” he said.
Sixteen-year-old Talya De Silva, a fifth form student of Charity Secondary School was found hanging in her home on December 12, 2013.
Her body was discovered by her younger brother and sister who were at home at the time.
