The drowning of 17-year-old Shamar Edwards has left friends and family in a state of disbelief and the big question being asked is “where were the lifeguards”?
At a poolside hotel with as reputable a name as the Princess hotel, one would only expect management to have the necessary arrangements in place for all water lovers and hotel guests; whether or not a person can swim.
But sadly, leading up to 6:00 pm on Saturday (25/01/14), Shamar Edwards had been dying slowly because no lifeguard was there to resuscitate him or even save him while he was drowning.
According to reports, the now deceased Edwards and a couple of his friends who recently graduated from the Saint Stanislaus College sixth form, planned to have a day of ‘Fun’ at the princess hotel pool, instead it ended in tragedy.
When Guyana Graphic contacted the father of the dead teen who is the manager at the North East Taxi Service, Kwame Edwards, he was speechless still and could not offer any insight as to what had happened.
It was reported that no one noticed that the deceased was missing until someone shouted that there was a body under water.
Most of the teen friends’ were in the changing room at the time of the incident but they maintain, had the lifeguard been present, Edwards would have been alive.
Efforts to contact the Ambulance service proved futile and the teen was transported to the East Demerara Regional Hospital at Diamond by taxi, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
The Management and Staff of the Princess hotel declined to shed light on the unfortunate incident.
