The body that was fished out of the Canje River on Monday has been identified as that of Dwayne Vieira, a patient who escaped from the New Amsterdam Psychiatric Hospital (NAPH) on Saturday.
Police are waiting on the man’s relatives to identify his remains before a post-mortem examination is performed. Reports are that Vieira, 38 of Georgetown, was one of 25 persons who were “cleaned up” from the streets of the city during the recent Union of South American (UNASUR) summit and taken to the NAPH.
The decomposing body was discovered floating in the Canje River around 9 am on Monday. It was clad in a pair of multi-coloured shorts and a brown t-shirt that bore the slogan, ‘Somebody in Guyana Loves me.’ The man’s mouth and left eye appeared to be “eaten by fish,” according to police sources. The police said too that “no marks of violence were found on the body.”
Hubert Thompson, of Angoy’s Avenue, New Amsterdam said that he and others were searching for his boat when they found the body. They left from an area behind Tucber Park, NA, in a boat Thompson borrowed from a friend and were heading up river when they noticed what appeared to be a body caught among some bushes and decided to investigate. The bloated body was discovered face down.
Sources from the institution told Stabroek News that Vieira and some of the other patients insisted that they did not belong there and wanted to go back to Georgetown. Around 11 am on Saturday Vieira reportedly “broke the ventilation and escaped” to a bushy area at the back of the building. An alarm was raised but by the time staff got to the area to recapture him he had already disappeared among the bushes.
The sources said that they notified their supervisors but they could not say if the matter was reported to the police. They also said that they do not have contact with the man’s relatives.
According to them, after the story was published in the papers yesterday one of the staff decided to check the Arokium Funeral Home and identified the remains and then informed the police.
This newspaper learnt too that about two hours later “another patient tried to escape in the same manner and had to be locked in a room.”
Meanwhile, the sources said that the “ward is very crowded with the people that were brought from Georgetown and we don’t have adequate staff to monitor them.”
They said too that the “maids have to go to past the male ward to get to the washroom and they do not feel safe…”
The sources said the institution needs more staff but noted that “with the condition here it is hard for persons to be attracted to the jobs.”
