One year after she died following the electrical shock she suffered while attempting to turn off a switch at the Secret Villa Guesthouse where she worked, the children of 58-year-old Beulah Browne are calling for justice.
According to them, they would not let the matter rest until the management of the guesthouse admits that she was electrocuted.
Minard and Lisa Browne, two of the woman’s three children, recently told Stabroek News that while they have accepted that their mother is no more, it hurts that the company she “slaved for” in the last four years of her life could treat her with such callous disrespect.
Browne, who lived at Vreed-en-Hoop with Lisa her youngest child at the time of her death, was rushed from the Land of Canaan guesthouse on March 21 last year to the Diamond Diagnostic Hospital after she collapsed when she was electrocuted when attempting to turn off the main switch of the establishment because of sparking wires.
She was later transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital where she died the following day.
An autopsy performed on her body revealed that she died as a result of cerebral haemorrhage. The post-mortem report, which was prepared by pathologist Dr Nehaul Singh, said another factor that had given rise to the woman’s death was hypertension, while a contributing factor was burns sustained to her fingers.
Lisa told Stabroek News that the doctor explained to her later that the electrical shock her mother received would have sent her pressure up and burst an artery in her head which caused her death.
While the management of the establishment had never acknowledged that the woman had suffered electrical shock at the establishment, reports were that because there was some illegal wiring on the building, Browne, who was the manager of the guesthouse, ran to turn off the switch as soon as she heard of the sparking wires.
The switch was turned off but immediately she fell to the ground unconscious and never regained consciousness.
The woman’s children recently told Stabroek News that they have had two meetings with the management of the guesthouse, one just after her death and another after the post-mortem examination (PME).
Lisa felt her mother’s death the hardest as she still lived with her and the two of them had just secured a mortgage to build their own home.
Lisa said the owners of the guesthouse refused to admit that the woman suffered electrical shock and their attitude changed after the PME.
She said while the guesthouse stood part of the funeral expenses they have heard nothing from them since and this hurts the most.
“Imagine my mother had just taken out a mortgage and they really offered us nothing. What hurt me, is that they have not owned up to their responsibility, they said they liked her but really they just wanted to lose her,” Lisa said as tears welled up.
She recalled that her mother’s job entailed her living in at the establishment during the week and she was expected to be at home on the weekends but on many weekends she opted to remain at the establishment because she was needed there and she never complained.
Browne was not supposed to be at the establishment on the Sunday she received the electrical shock but her daughter said she was asked to stay and as usual she did not hesitate.
Meanwhile, according to Minard, even though their parents were separated they were still married and that made their father the legal guardian of her estate. He said they needed their father to turn over the guardianship to them before they could move forward with any action.
He said since they have not heard any word from the management of the guesthouse they have sought the assistance of a lawyer and they would be taking legal action.
“We have not called them but they have our numbers and they have not attempted to call us,” he said.
Watching cricket
Going over the details that led to her mother’s demise, Lisa said she was told that her mother was watching cricket on television when she was told by a neighbour that the wires were sparking and she immediately ran to turn off the switch and that was when she fell.
Lisa said she received a call from a woman who operated the canteen at the guesthouse, who is the wife of the brother of the owner of the establishment. The woman related to her that “my mother got shock and that she is lifeless on the floor and I should go to the Diamond hospital.”
The young woman said she immediately called her brother and they hurried down to the hospital where they saw their mother lying on a stretcher being administered saline.
When she approached the doctor to enquire about her mother’s condition, Lisa said, she was shocked to learn that the person who took her to the hospital — the canteen operator’s husband — had informed the doctor that her mother “was watching TV all day and she pressure went up.
“I got very upset and I told the doctor what really happened and they called an ambulance to take her to Georgetown and then they started to look for burn marks,” Lisa said.
She said following her mother’s death they had a meeting with the management of the guesthouse and were told that there was a list of issues that were up for discussion and first up was the payment of $10,000 to her on a monthly basis, which her mother’s boss was not even prepared to put in writing.
Lisa said that she and her brother bluntly refused the offer and the meeting ended abruptly so they are not sure whether there was even any other issue up for discussion.
Before the meeting ended though they were told by one of the individuals “if you want to get dirty then I can get dirty,” Minard related.
The woman’s children said that the matter was never reported to the police until later and by then she said whatever illegal electrical connections existed at establishment had been rectified.
She said the owner of the guesthouse was once employed with the Guyana Power & Light Inc and reportedly took a crew of his former colleagues into the compound shortly after the incident.
GPL Managing Director Bharrat Dindyal had told Stabroek News at the time of the incident that an emergency crew from the power company had responded to the report about a sparking wire at the guesthouse at Land of Canaan, but had been unable to investigate because they had been denied entry to the premises.
Dindyal had said that the company had contacted the Government Electrical En-gineer and requested assistance since that official was allowed to investigate such incidents.
Dindyal had said that GPL had the authority to check the meter at premises, but was restrained from going beyond that point, and the power company could not investigate because of this.
While Dindyal had said they had advised the government engineer and had offered him technical support to carry out an investigation at the premises, there has been no further word on that investigation and the GPL boss could not say whether the owner of the guesthouse had indeed worked with the power company.
Management at the guesthouse never spoke on the incident. An employee had told Stabroek News that she had no knowledge of any person being electrocuted on the premises, adding “that was not here.”
“It is just as if someone was murdered and you get no justice,” Lisa said.
She said since her mother’s death she has been forced to move in with her brother and the house that was being built is yet to be completed.
“Just a month before her death my brother told her to leave the job because she was working too hard and she told him when the house was finished. Now she will never live in the house,” Lisa said in tears.
