Soldier dies in Camp Jaguar ‘horseplay’ -Relatives want answers

A soldier died at the army’s Camp Jaguar New River location last week Tuesday following what the military said was an accident but the young man’s family is not accepting this explanation and wants more information from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).

The relatives of 21-year-old Kacey Bishop, of 84 Freeman Street, East La Penitence, are calling on the hierarchy of the GDF to “speak the truth” as they are convinced that he died after being hit by someone.

They feel that the army is “covering up” the matter as it never issued any release on the young’s man death to the media and it was only after the man’s mother and sister approached the media that officials from the GDF spoke on the issue when contacted.

The relatives pointed out that the post-mortem performed on the young man’s body last week Friday found that he died from asphyxiation due to suffocation compounded by blunt trauma to the head.

In an invited comment last evening, Major Jaswick Williams of the GDF said that the army received reports of the incident around 6 pm last week Tuesday. Williams told Stabroek News that their initial report was that Bishop died by drowning. According to the army Major, the following day a team of investigators was dispatched to the location in eastern Guyana to conduct an investigation.

Williams told Stabroek News that based upon the reports gathered by the investigators Bishop and his colleagues had played a game of volleyball after which they went down to the river to have a bath when the incident occurred.

Major Williams said it was while bathing that Bishop and four of his colleagues were involved in what the Major described as “horseplay”. Subsequently, Bishop slipped and fell into the river hitting his head on a rock as he went down. Major Williams said that the ranks did not react immediately to the incident, but when they realised that Bishop was not rising from the water they went in and pulled him out. Some of the ranks under the watch of a medex performed Cardio-Pulmonary-Resuscitation on Bishop to no avail. Williams confirmed that the soldier died before being brought out of the area.

The Major said that shortly after the incident, the matter was reported to the relevant authority. The next day a team was dispatched to the area to conduct investigations. Later, the Army’s board of inquiry also went into the area and it, too, conducted investigations.

Speaking to this newspaper yesterday, the young man’s sister, Keisha Bishop, said that it was last week Wednesday morning she received a call from an officer in the army informing her of her brother’s death and asking for directions to the house. She said when the officials arrived at the home they said that Bishop, who enlisted in the GDF in March of 2004 and was sent to New River on December 11 last, was pushed off of a rock, fell into the water and died by drowning after hitting his head. She said that afternoon they went to the Lyken Funeral Home and identified the body of the young man. She said he also had abrasions on his forehead. According to her on Friday morning when they went to identify the body again, this time for the post-mortem, the body looked different.

She said they were initially told that the incident was being investigated but they have not heard anything from the army since even though they have been contacting them about funeral arrangements.

Kacey would be buried today with full military honours.

“I think he was in an argument and he get into a fight because there were marks all on his elbow and I feel that he was gun butted and he fell unconscious,” Keisha, who is a police officer, said she questioned who would have pronounced her brother dead since there was no doctor at the location. “So why was he taken straight to the funeral parlour?” she asked.

“We just want answers and the truth about his death