A West Bank Demerara mother is mourning the death of a second son in two months and has lamented the paucity of facilities for drug addicts.
Ingrid Subryan’s son Roger Samuel, 44, was found dead in the Lusignan Prison yesterday morning after he had been remanded there over the alleged theft of a car.
Another son of Subryan, Randy Samuel, 42, died in November last year after he was hit down by a Puran Brothers garbage truck.
Both of the Samuels had lived with Ingrid at Lot 2606 Phase Two, Recht Door Zee, La Parfaite Hamonie.
According to a statement yesterday by the Guyana Prison Service (GPS), at about 6 am, the officer on duty was in the process of unlocking the prisoners to get washed up when Samuel was discovered lying on his bed motionless. A doctor and the police commander were called to the scene where he was pronounced dead.
Samuel had been remanded to prison over the larceny of the car. He was housed in unit 1 with several other prisoners at the time of the incident. According to the GPS, Samuel was admitted to the prison on Friday bearing injuries to his body which according to the prison service were inflicted by members of the public when the alleged offence was committed.
Stabroek News yesterday visited the home of the deceased and spoke with his mother. She said that the deceased was a drug addict for twenty-nine years.
“He fighting with drugs for twenty-nine years, he fight, he fight and now he get old, he get more weak. Is three weeks now, he left and go on the `island’ somewhere through the burial ground at Albouystown. He went smoking, then he come home and break up me windows. There is sheer drugs. When you wuk there, they pay you with drugs. I say, ‘Man you ain’t deh at a good place, come home and he come home but by the time he come home, he was done messed up. He going on and cussing up and breaking up”, she said.
Subryan said that owing to Samuel’s mental state, she had called for an ambulance to take him to the National Psychiatric Hospital but no one came. The woman said during the time, Samuel was breaking her windows and she called the police but no one came.
Her son, she said, returned home at the beginning of January at which time, she observed that he was injured. Samuel, she said, told her that he had been robbed in late December and when he went to the Brickdam Police Station to make a report, they arrested him instead. She said it was related to her by Roger that at the time he was detained, he was under the influence of narcotics and was making too much noise at the station which led to an altercation. She noted that he was later released and then visited relatives on New Year’s Day where he collapsed and an ambulance was sent for and he was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital. Subryan added that instead of doing an x-ray on his injured foot, the staff there only stitched up a cut he had over his eye and gave him medication. In December, Samuel was beaten by members of the public as a result of the alleged theft of the car.
Discharged
Two Saturdays ago, Samuel was discharged from the GPH. The following day Subryan took him to the West Demerara Regional Hospital where he was seen by a doctor but no X-ray of his injured foor could be done, she said, as she was told that the machine was out of ink. She then took Samuel to see her doctor at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital but was told that her doctor was out of the office until February. Subryan then took Samuel to the Medical Arts Hospital on January 4th where an X-ray was done and it was discovered that his right foot was broken in three places. His foot was then put in a cast.
Subryan who has back and knee problems shared that she has a walker which helps her to get about. The following day, Samuel used his mother’s walker to head out to the road. Last Thursday she said a stranger arrived at her house asking for Samuel’s bicycle which she believes her now dead son was trying to sell so that he could buy more drugs. She said that she chased the stranger away.
Later that day, she received a call from her son telling her that an officer would turn up at the house for food for him. “Me ain’t think that the police gon hold he in that condition he deh for the car story. He carry away somebody car which is what he get hold fuh but they find the car. In the afternoon a policewoman call and tell me that I must bring food fuh he and that they got he at [La] Parfaite Harmonie lockups. I call another officer who know about the car story and ask he how come me son get lock up and he ain’t tell me. He say he just reach in at the station. He sleep in the lockup that night. The police tell me bring clothes the next morning (Friday) for he because he got to go to court. When he go to court now, he call me and tell me, he deh pon remand so I say ‘how you deh pon remand, you plead not guilty? Why you don’t plead guilty to get rest because look at yuh condition’. Anyway, I turn off me phone because I sick. I just lose another son. He brother too was fighting with drugs and he die only in November. People chop them up in the scheme here. Nobody don’t help, government don’t help. They say they got drugs rehabiliatation and everything but nothing don’t work. Nothing don’t work in this PPP system; you can’t go nowhere ful lil help”, the woman said. The other son mentioned was Randy Samuel, a forty-two-year-old who was struck down by a Puran’s garbage truck when it was alleged that he ran out from under a bus shed into the path of the truck.
Owing to her phone being off, the officer in charge of the prison was unable to contact her yesterday morning to inform her of Samuel’s death. She subsequently learnt of the same from a neighbour who saw it on the news. When she called the Lusignan Prison, she was able to confirm this.
“The officer at the prison said that me son was in a room in quarantine with other persons waiting to go to the hospital to check fuh see if he got COVID… The officer in charge of the prison tell me that somebody said he went hollering ‘help’ but nobody didn’t go to he aid. He said when they open the prison this morning, they see he naked as he born and he did vomit blood”, Subryan said.
She said she was told by the officer in charge of the prison that the inmates who were with him at the time he died are being questioned.
“Twenty-nine years he fight with drugs. He guh all in prison and ain’t get no help. In Guyana, all I can tell mothers is try a lot when you children straying. Keep them home cause this country ain’t got no rehabiliation. That is just a front them putting up. You calling the numbers, you can’t get through, nothing”, said Subryan.
In November of 2012, Roger Samuel was sentenced to four years in prison by Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry after he admitted to a history of stealing motorcycles. “If I commit a crime, I does plead guilty, ’cause I get ketch, there is nothing I could do bout dah,” Samuel had said during his sentencing.
His body is currently at Lyken Funeral Home awaiting a post-mortem examination.
