A patient of the Georgetown Public Hospital, who was found bleeding in his bed in the wee hours of yesterday morning, subsequently succumbed from the injury, which the hospital said was self-inflicted.

Antonio Smith, 39, of Albouystown, a press statement from the hospital said, who was a patient of the Male Medical Ward, died at “4.30 this [yesterday] morning from a self-inflicted wound”. According to the statement, the man was discovered by nurses lying on his bed with a wound to the right side neck at approximately 2.35 am yesterday.

Smith was immediately given medical attention but later succumbed to his wound, the hospital said. The police were subsequently informed.

However, despite the fact that the hospital issued a press release to the media on the incident, when this newspaper visited the James Street, Albouystown home of the man shortly after 5 pm yesterday, his mother had not yet been informed of her son’s death.

“Why you calling ah early death on my son?” Dolly Bobb asked laughingly when this newspaper approached her for a picture of her deceased son.

According to Bobb, her son was a patient of the hospital for about three weeks and had been diagnosed with a form of cancer in his neck. “He got this big lump in his neck and they [doctors] say is cancer…they been drawing out blood from it but it ain’t really go down,” she explained.

Bobb was under the impression that this newspaper was looking for her so that some light could be shed on her son’s situation for him to get more help. Stabroek News later contacted Bobb’s sister, Paulette Charles, via telephone some time later.

Charles too had not been informed of Smith’s death by the hospital, “I am shocked that the media has been informed before us,” she stated. “Thank you so much for telling me…I will have to break the news to my sister,” Charles said before bursting into tears.

When contacted about the incident the hospital’s administrator, Michael Khan, said that it was the duty of the Nurse’s Station to inform families of deaths. “I don’t know why this was not done…I will have to contact the Nurse’s Station for more information on this,” he said.

Questioned about how Smith would have had a knife in his possession, Khan stated: “He [Smith] might have brought it [the knife] with him or someone may have given it to him. We don’t search patients unless they are being admitted to the psychiatric ward.”

This newspaper later learnt from Charles that on Saturday they had taken Smith a knife, which he had said he wanted to peel his oranges. “We hear he kill himself…maybe the pain was too much,” Smith’s aunt said.

Stabroek News understands that during the days prior to the incident Smith had been in a state of depression.