– to be buried today
FIFTY-one-year-old Linton Gabriel Lewis, electrocuted at Port Kaituma last Tuesday, is to be buried at Port Kaituma this afternoon, following a post mortem examination performed in the city yesterday.
The autopsy performed by Dr. V. Brijmohan at Georgetown Public Hospital Mortuary, gives Lewis’ cause of death as electrocution.

Lewis, a father of four, employed with the Malaria Eradication Unit of the Ministry of Health for more than 25 years, and more recently, the Port Kaituma branch of Air Services Ltd, met his demise around 9:00 hrs. on December 26 as he was walking through a ‘short cut’ to get from his home to Port Kaituma Water Front.

Persons who witnessed the incident said that while walking along the track,  an ice pitcher he was carrying on his head, came into contact with a powered electrical wire (not installed by GPL), extending from a building on one side of the road to a popular business place on the other side.

Witnesses said that Lewis, not realizing what was happening over his head, attempted tugging the wet pitcher away from the wire, and was hit by the electric power in the line and thrown onto the ground.

Public-spirited persons ran to his rescue and rushed him to the Port Kaituma Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

His wife Joy, who is into the second trimester of pregnancy with her fourth child, fainted on receiving the tragic news. The matter was reported to the police at Port Kaituma and several persons gave statements.  However, no charge was immediately made, pending the results of an anticipated post mortem.

This newspaper understands that the dead man’s relatives at Port Kaituma were given the verbal ‘go-ahead’ to bury him in order to expedite matters, and should an inquest become necessary at a later date, his body could be exhumed.

However, Lewis’ other siblings, three of whom are medical doctors resident in the  United States of America, advised against that line of action and, two days later, arranged to have his body flown out of Port Kaituma to the city for an autopsy to be done by the Government Pathologist.

In the meantime, two of his overseas based siblings, arrived in Guyana on Old Year’s Day and have travelled to Port Kaituma where they met with the dead man’s wife, children and other siblings in Guyana to address the matter and arrange for his burial.
But since there is no pathologist at Port Kaituma, the aggrieved relatives of the dead man were forced to fly his body out of the Region on Friday last so a post mortem examination could be done yesterday.

The post mortem having been concluded, the police are expected to lay charges against the suspect in connection with the man’s death.

However, in a strange twist of fortune, reports coming out of that Region claimed that the wires were hurriedly removed. And claims that they cannot be accounted for, are yet to be verified.

Described as a wonderful father whose wife and children were central to everything he did, Lewis had great plans ahead for them.

In September 2009, they joined his overseas-based siblings for a memorable ‘family reunion’ on the Essequibo Coast, and during which, family acquaintances were rekindled, and medical outreach work conducted on the Essequibo Coast, Pomeroon and Georgetown by the US-based host team, comprising six doctors and about five nurses who are family members of the Lewis/Allen line.   It was their last meeting in Guyana as a family.

Notwithstanding, Lewis’ death has come at a time when passengers arriving here from the United States are experiencing serious problems getting out of Guyana, following cancellation of New York-bound flights on Monday and Tuesday of last week, as a result of the snow storm which severely hit New York, among other places.

This has led to hundreds of passengers being stranded here, and being given departure dates taking them well into the first two weeks of January.

Against this back ground, Lewis’ siblings who arrived here on an emergency visit for his funeral are hoping that, following the funeral, they can get out of  Guyana soon enough to return to work in the U.S. within a few days.

The year 2010 has ended tragically for the relatives of Linton Lewis and 22-year-old Rhett Cole, a Trainee Technician of the Guyana Water Inc, at the Linden Branch of the GWI. Both men were executed on the same day.  Lewis died at Port Kaituma and Cole at Linden.

Rhett Cole, who was attached to the company’s Linden Division, worked as a GWI trainee through the Board of Industrial Training.

According to GWI’s Divisional Operations Manager, Rawle Friday, Cole was part of a team addressing an electrical phasing problem at the McKenzie Water Treatment Plant with assistance from technicians from the Linden Electricity Company Incorporated (LECI), when he met his demise.