– had been receiving death threats following alleged theft of cell phone
A 14-year-old Plaisance Community High School student Mark Kirpaul died on Saturday last after ingesting a poisonous substance following countless death threats from an unknown person. His relatives believe that he might not have voluntarily consumed the substance.
Another student of the school, a 13-year-old girl, has also been receiving threats and her parents have reported the matter to the police.
According to the children’s parents and relatives, the threats began following the reported theft of a female teacher’s cellular phone. Several efforts by Stabroek News to make contact with the teacher last evening proved futile.
And following a discovery among Kirpaul’s things after his death, relatives are questioning the nature of the relationship between Kirpaul and the teacher.
A post-mortem examination conducted on Kirpaul’s body yesterday showed that he had consumed a poisonous substance, which led to his eventual death. Samples were taken from the body to carry out further tests to identify the poison. Relatives were told that the results should be available in about two weeks.
When the media visited Kirpaul’s Second Street, Better Hope, East Coast Demerara home yesterday many relatives had gathered and were discussing the tragedy.
Requesting anonymity, relatives said that on Saturday morning, Kirpaul had left home to follow his grandmother to catch transportation to go work and then proceeded to a shop to buy kerosene oil. He returned about half an hour later and his aunt instructed him to go and clean himself up so that he could have some breakfast. However, before he could do so, he began crying out for pains in the stomach and collapsed near a standpipe in the yard, vomiting repeatedly and his grandmother was contacted.
The woman, who is also Kirpaul’s guardian, said she rushed back home to find him lifeless but conscious and decided to take him to the hospital. She said she repeatedly asked him if he had drunk something dangerous and he replied in the negative. All the while, she said, he was calling for water.
She said that at the Georgetown Public Hospital it took some time for him to be taken into the treatment room but once that was done the staff there tried everything to save him. Tears welling in her eyes, the woman said that he died around 12.45 pm in the Accident and Emergency Unit.
Shortly after his death, this newspaper was told, the teacher, along with the other victim of the threats and her parents arrived at the hospital and burst into tears on hearing the news.
The boy’s relatives had not been aware that he had been threatened until they went to the Sparendaam Police Station to report his death.
Kirpaul’s relatives said that over the last few months, the teacher in question had become very close to the teenager, sometimes picking him up from home and taking him to lunch.
The relatives said that last Wednesday morning the teacher went to the house and said she needed Kirpaul to go to the station to make a report about her stolen phone. She took the child to the station without any relative and he later returned home alone.
The relatives said the teacher next turned up at the home last Saturday shortly after Kirpaul had been taken to the hospital, asking again for the boy to accompany her to the police station.
The relatives then found out that things had escalated on Friday night last, when an unknown man kept calling at a taxi service base in Cummings Lodge where the lad was helping out an uncle, and threatening him.
The parents of the 13-year-old girl told the media yesterday that she too received threatening telephone calls from a man who said his name was ‘Charlie’. They said their daughter told them that this had happened on Tuesday and they immediately informed the teacher.
The girl’s mother said that early the following morning, the teacher rang their home and told her to go to the police station. There, she said, she saw Kirpaul without a parent or guardian and asked him if they knew what was happening. She said that Kirpaul replied in the affirmative.
The woman said the boy later rang her home, requesting to speak with her daughter, in whom he confided that he had been receiving threats. He told me that the man said, “I am Charlie. I need your life, your heart, your soul,” the girl said.
On Friday night, ‘Charlie’ rang the girl’s home and when her father answered, he was told that his daughter was going to be kidnapped by noon the following day. Noon met them making a report at the Sparendaam Police Station, he said.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News was told that a photograph of Kirpaul and the female teacher warmly embracing each other was discovered hidden among the teen’s clothing following his death.
His relatives are urging the police to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child’s death.
Kirpaul was described at a pleasant but quiet child, who did not confide in his relatives.
He also leaves to mourn, his parents, Anthony and Asha and five siblings.
