The family of a patient who died on Sunday evening after a fight at the National Psychiatric Hospital in New Amsterdam, Berbice, are calling for a police investigation.
Stephan Francis, 29, of Lot 67 Public Road, Kitty, Georgetown, succumbed during the wee hours of yesterday morning after he sustained an injury to his head.
Region Six’s Director of Regional Health Services Jevaughn Stephens, when contacted yesterday, said there was a scuffle between patients, leading to Francis falling and hitting his head. He said a post-mortem examination is expected to be done today. The suspected assailant has since been taken into custody.
When questioned as to how long Francis had been a patient at the facility, Stephens could not say. However, relatives of Francis said he arrived at the institution last Monday. According to his relatives, it was the second time he would have been admitted as a patient at the institution.
Francis’s aunt, Samantha Young, explained, that she received a message from a social worker just after midnight on Sunday, “informing that there was an incident resulting from some items that were about to be stolen from him that his mother would have brought earlier in the day and when he tried to defend his property he was attacked by two other patients, resulting in him getting injured and he subsequently died.”
Young then noted that after arriving yesterday in Berbice, they visited the office of Director Stephens, who failed to give them a proper report of what transpired at the hospital. “We met with the Director. It was just after 3.30 pm today and an incident occur more than 12 hours ago and you don’t have the facts or any report is saying something is terribly wrong with this system! And 12 hours after you got to be asking across the floor who is the person? You know the family is on their way and we would need a proper report and you throw back? This is slackness,” she said.
His mother, Maylene Prince, explained, that Sunday was Francis’s birthday and she brought him a number of items. “I brought up all that he like, everything them ask me for I bought and give to them. When my son came up he came up with a bag and a set of snacks, juice and everything, when me come he don’t have on a slippers, when I ask, he say them thief he slippers, them (other patients) get on me child clothes”, she said.
Prince described her son as a very kind and sharing person.
