Boy, 14, dies after Bushy Park outing

- mother suspects foul play

A 14-year-old boy died after a family outing at the Bushy Park Beach resort, East Bank Essequibo on Sunday, and his mother is demanding an investigation because she believes he was murdered.

Charles ‘Anthony’ Pross, of La Parfaite Harmonie, West Bank Demerara, was taken in an unconscious state to the Leonora Cottage Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Charles ‘Anthony’ Pross
Charles ‘Anthony’ Pross

His mother, Shellown Henry, 36, told Stabroek News that her son had been submerged in the water at the beach for some time. She and others did CPR in an effort to revive him and he gasped for breath a few times.

Henry yesterday suggested that there was foul play in her son’s death.

Henry, her son and a group of relatives went to the beach to celebrate the 39th birthday of her brother, Mark.

She said they did not go into the water. However, around 2.30 pm, a man at the beach gave her son a strange looking fish, which was about the size of her palm.

Henry said she told her son that he should not take anything from anyone and she had planned to take him to return the fish to the man. However, she said she went to the washroom and returned to learn that her brother had told the boy to take the fish back to the man in the meantime.

Henry then set out to find her son and she said the man who had given him the fish told her that he was in the water and the waves had pushed him in “the middle.”

The boy’s uncle then jumped in and started searching for him.

As this was happening, Henry said, a “strange man” told her that the boy was in fact closer to the shore, where the man who had given him the fish was standing.

Just then, they saw the boy’s hand in the water and the man made two steps back, she said. As her son surfaced, Henry said, he threw himself on a rock nearby and she fainted.

Later, she said, while taking Pross in the vehicle to the hospital she kept telling him, “Anthony, you can’t go and leave me.”

At this point, Henry said, he was twitching his eyes.

However, the woman noted her disappointment at finding no porter or stretcher when they got to the hospital. She said they placed him outside on the ground for more than half hour.

It was only after her brother, Mark, arrived and started cursing that they took Pross in and started attending to him. About 20 minutes later, she said, the staff informed her that he was dead.

Henry said she believes the man who gave her son the fish had something to do with his being submerged in the water.

She said relatives told her that Pross twine wrapped around his legs from the thighs down and she believes it was deliberately wrapped. She also pointed out that the man misled them about her son’s location in the water and said she thinks he may have been standing on the boy to keep him submerged in the water.

Meanwhile, Henry said that amidst her distress, the owner of the resort called her last evening to tell her he was not responsible for what happened to her son.