A 19-year-old miner was yesterday killed after a falling tree crushed him at Arakaka Backdam, North West District.
Dead is Richard Kanhai, of Pomeroon, Essequibo, who began working as the general manager at a camp at 6 Mile, Arakaka about four months ago.
According to fellow miner, Gregory Payne, the accident occurred around 1 pm yesterday when Kanhai and other miners had gone into the backdam to “bore” the land.
“He was about 15 to 20 feet from the excavator and the man was boring the land and the wind was so hard that the tree break in half,” Payne recounted. He went on to say that another miner, seeing the falling tree, called out for the nearby men to run. Though two of the men managed to escape, Kanhai was not as fortunate and was pinned under the fallen tree.
Payne added that Kanhai’s body, after being extracted, arrived at the camp around 5pm. Kanhai, he said, had suffered a crushed skull and had blood pouring out of several orifices.
The body was subsequently picked up by the police before it was transported to the Port Kaituma Hospi-tal.
According to a police press release, investigations are in progress.
