Eleven-year-old Guyanese school girl Adrianna Younge who was found dead in a pool at the Double Day Hotel in Guyana.
Photo courtesy Younge’s family
Last week, an 11-year-old schoolgirl and family members went for a half-day outing at a hotel resort on Guyana’s west coast where she was apparently abducted by hotel agents, brutally beaten, and her body dumped into the facility’s pool in an apparent bizarre religious sacrifice that has left an entire nation in mourning.
Once she had disappeared from her grandmother and relatives who were in the pool, an immediate search was launched for Adrianna Younge. Relatives and others at the hotel demanded answers from hotel management as to her whereabouts.
When proper answers were not forthcoming, family members and Tuschen Villagers surrounded the hotel, urging police and staffers to allow them to search the building as they were adamant that she had never left to return home or to run an errand for anyone.
Instead of cooperating with the search parties, regional police issued a statement explaining that she had willingly boarded a red vehicle with a mature male and had taken off from the resort, abandoning the family party. Police later retracted the statement and admitted that it had been misleading. The action by the police has led to allegations from her parents that officers had been protecting the wealthy owner of the Double Day Hotel rather than treating the facility as a crime scene.
Under severe pressure from the public, the social media world, opposition parties, and rights activists, the police high command has since sent Commander Khalid Mandal on leave pending an investigation into the bizarre circumstances of her death. The hotel has also been destroyed by fire. Officers are probing whether the fire was started by management or by protestors on the scene.
As protests swirled around the country with calls from the dismissal of Police Chief Clifton Hicken, authorities flew in three pathologists from overseas to conduct the autopsy as her body had shown severe marks of violence and as cotton wool was stuffed into her nostrils when the body was dumped into the pool. Several rounds of searches by police and relatives once she had gone missing were conducted. There was no sign of a corpse in the pool until the following day, just minutes after the last pool inspection.
Villagers and relatives are adamant that Adrianna has been the victim of some Hindu-related religious ritual, mainly because of a similar incident at the facility in 2012. Back then, visitor Sideek Juman was killed virtually along the same lines as Adrianna, as his body showed marks of blunt trauma before it was dumped into the pool.
The hotel manager, Bhojnarine Bhola, 29, and his driver, Leyland Johnson, 26, were slapped with murder charges but eventually freed by a court in 2016 for lack of evidence. Villagers say that 13 years later, history appears to have repeated itself.
Amecia Simon, the mother of the dead child, told reporters that the mother of the late Sideek Juman had contacted her to offer condolences and to express the hope that the perpetrators are jailed for a long while this time. “The woman said,” I pray that you get justice for your daughter because I never get justice for my son, but this here, I will get justice. I ain’t sleeping. I will get justice. He has to go to jail.”
As for the circumstances regarding her disappearance, the mom stated, “From the time this thing happened, I told them I said my 11-year-old will not leave here to go anywhere. I have three children. She is my quietest child. My nine-year-old would have to represent her 11-year-old sister. All my child does is complain. She can’t represent herself, and I could imagine how my child bawled for her mother and father when they did what they did to her. I could imagine how meh baby bawl fah we,” the grieving mother said.
As the nation mourns and as people pour out their feelings on social media, President Irfaan Ali says he wants a full probe. “We must uncover the full truth of everything that transpired, and no resource or effort will be spared in doing so. Whatever specialized resources are required to determine every aspect of the events and circumstances will be provided. Additionally, I have asked that the police explain, in detail, every action taken since the matter was reported. Like the rest of the country, I stand with this family at this time of extreme grief.”
