A regular Sunday afternoon at the Watooka Club swimming pool at Linden came to an abrupt end yesterday after a teenager died

Marlon Forde

Sixteen-year old Marlon Forde left his 608 Block 22 home sometime after 2 pm yesterday with his mother’s blessing after he told her he was going out to a farm with some club members. However Forde and his friends diverted to the Watooka Club swimming pool where they were said to have been drinking alcohol.

The group of boys, among several other patrons of the pool, were said to have been horsing around when Forde met his demise. According to a reliable source, the boys, about six in number, were warned and ordered out of the pool by the lifeguard on duty at the time but they failed to comply.

Sources close to the club’s management said that the lifeguard had left to use the toilet and upon his return he noticed everyone running away from the pool. Upon investigation he discovered Forde’s lifeless body lying at the edge of the pool.

It was reported that his friends had pulled his body from the water around 5 pm before fleeing the scene. His mother Patricia Forde told Stabroek News that she got word of her son’s death while washing clothes. She said that at first she refused to believe the first caller because her son did not leave home to go to the pool.

It was not until her husband received several other calls urging them to rush to the pool that the mother believed. At the scene Patricia lay over the lifeless body of her son crying. “You disobey me, you say you going to some farm with yuh friends, dis is de farm Marlon?” wailed the grieving mother.

Marlon was the sixth of eight children and the first boy of the lot for his parents. Prior to leaving home for his afternoon outing, he had attended the Wisroc Revival Centre Assembly of God Church with his family.