Seventeen-yr-old detained over tossing boy overboard

Boats and divers searching the Demerara River for Omar Mitchell yesterday while relatives and others look on. (Photo by Jeff Trotman)

A Linden teen is in police custody after the boy he threw into the Demerara River on Tuesday disappeared underwater and has not been seen since.

Feared dead is Omar Mitchell, 14, of Half Mile Wismar, who left home on Tuesday afternoon for his friend’s home, according to his aunt, Cheryl Waithe. She said it was not until later when Mitchell’s mother Onika Mitchell, received a call from the Police Station to report there, that the family became aware of the incident.

Waithe said Omar, his friends and the 17-year-old who threw him into the river, had all gone to the river, in the vicinity of the Mackenzie River Bridge, to bathe and swim respectively. She said they were told that Omar informed the others that he would only take a bath in the river, since he could not swim. However, the eldest of the teens at the river threw him over board, in spite of Omar’s declaration.

Waithe said a friend of Omar informed the police that after he was thrown into the river,