… Pathologist confirms inmates died from burns, smoke inhalation

By Svetlana Marshall
None of the 17 persons who were killed in the Camp Street riot on March 3 were beheaded, but succumbed as a result of burns and smoke inhalation, Chief Pathologist, Dr Nehaul Singh said on Tuesday.However, in the post-mortem, he found evidence that two of the prisoners suffered blunt trauma, which usually refers to a person being hit with a solid object.
In these two cases, Dr Singh said the blunt trauma may have been as a result of a fall or intentional or unintentional acts of violence, such as cuffing or lashing. One of the prisoners was injured on the top of his head and other to the back of his head.
The Chief Pathologist, who has close to 30 years of experience, was cross-examined on Tuesday before the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) appointed by President David Granger to look into the circumstances surrounding the deadly riot in which prisoners reportedly set fire to the remand block of the facility.
During the initial stages of the CoI, there were several reports of a charred headless corpse being seen in Capital Block A after the fire was extinguished. In fact, one of the prisoners – Steve Bacchus – told the Commission that he observed a single burnt skull on a mattress, but it was severed from the prisoner’s body.
But when the question of a headless body was put to the Chief Pathologist, he responded in the negative, stating clearly that all of the bodies had their heads intact.
“If there was a headless corpse, the families would have complained… but there was nothing like a headless body,” he said, while responding to the question put to him by the Commission’s Counsel, Excellence Dazzle.
It was then that he disclosed that two of the prisoners had suffered from blunt trauma to their heads, but maintained that it had not resulted in their deaths.

POSSIBLE CAUSES
“The cause of that (blunt trauma) could be several – falling, cuffing, kicking and lashing… I couldn’t say which one… but I don’t think those that had the trauma to the head died from that.”
The news that two prisoners had suffered from blunt trauma in the lead up to their deaths, caused Joint Services Attorney Eusi Anderson to press for more answers to the point that it made the Chief Pathologist become agitated.
From all indications, Counsel Anderson, during his cross-examination was attempting to suggest that Dr Singh, due to the lack of key equipment and technological devices, could not have conclusively state that the two prisoners in particular, had died due to burns and smoke inhalation. But the Chief Pathologist, who for the record stated that he would have conducted more than 20, 000 post-mortems, maintained that all of the prisoners died as a result of burns and smoke inhalation.
Nevertheless, in an effort to build his case, Attorney Anderson grilled Dr Singh on his limitations with respect to the execution of his job.
“We are a third world country, we are limited in many ways… in terms of x-rays, in terms of toxicology, in terms of the whole forensic sciences… we are limited, but we do our work to the best of our ability,” Dr Singh said in response.
He explained that due to the Department of Pathology limitation with respect to toxicology, he was unable to determine if any of the 17 prisoners were poisoned during or before the riot.
In return, the Joint Services Attorney suggested that: “Prisoners A-Q their remains were never tested for poison… so you cannot conclusively say that poisoning was a contributing factor… so that your opinion on causes of death from A-Q are incomplete if not incorrect… to the extent that you cannot include or exclude poison?”

NOT BY POISONING
Dr Singh however stood by his findings. “You might have consumed poison, but the cause of death is smoke inhalation,” he reaffirmed, noting that if any of the prisoners had died before the fire as a result of poisoning “that would have been a different story”.
“There is a possibility that poisoning could have rendered you unconscious and in your unconscious state, Dr Singh, fire could finish you off?” Attorney Anderson asked, as he put another line to questions to the Chief Pathologist, who responded in the affirmative.
Turning his attention to the blunt trauma, Attorney Anderson questioned whether the Chief Pathologist had caused x-rays to be done on all 17 prisoners. But Dr Singh, said first you would need the facility to execute such, which his department does not have.
He, however, made it clear that even in the absence of an x-ray machine, the remains were examined for fractures. According to Dr Singh, his human eyes are sufficient to determine if a body had suffered from a fractured bone or skull.
“If I want to look for a fracture I would move all of that muscle and look for it…,” he said while maintaining that he would have thoroughly examined all 17 prisoners and none had received life-threatening injuries in the lead up to the inferno. Notably, the two prisoners who had received blunt trauma to their heads were Indo-Guyanese and more than 90 per cent of their bodies were burnt during the inferno.