….clung to life for hours during trip from Blackwater to Ogle Airport
A 36-year-old businessman died yesterday at Blackwater, Konawaruk, Region  Eight (Potaro/Siparuni)  from a stab wound  inflicted on him at around 20:45hrs Thursday at that remote location. Conrad Semple  of Belladrum  died with the Rambo knife still stuck in his back at the Ogle Airport around 15:20hrs yesterday.
His friend and fellow businessman at Blackwater,  Kwame Trim, recalled a horrific midnight ride with the injured man in an All Terrain Vehicle(ATV) and then another rescue attempt by a 4×4 which  had to be winched out from potholes after being stuck many times on the trip out to Mahdia, 56 miles south east of the scene of the stabbing.
Semple was taken out of Mahdia from the hospital there around 14:10hrs yesterday .
He arrived  at Ogle International Airport around 15:30 hrs, waited for over an hour to get an ambulance, and is suspected to have succumbed at Ogle.
Trim was yesterday tearfully adamant that if the response had been prompt, if his friend had been taken out from Mahdia early yesterday morning, he would have survived.
”The emergency  system failed to work; it failed my friend,” he said.
Reports indicated that Semple, also known as “Soldier”,  was the owner of a shop at Blackwater, a gold mining community along the banks of the upper reaches of the Konawaruk river.
Trim recalled yesterday that the horror began around 20:45hrs Thursday when Semple observed a man who was a customer in his shop, making unusually  forceful advances on a female in the shop.
“The girl was Brazilian and she kept telling the man that she wasn’t doing any “business” but he kept forcing himself on her and Semple, taking on the mantle of a Good Samaritan,  intervened.
He was trying to get the man to desist when a friend of the man came up from behind Semple, plunged the knife into his back and then ran out of the shop.
In a desperate attempt to get his friend to receive medical attention, Trim got him onto to his ATV vehicle and began the long, bumpy journey to Mahdia.’
He recalled: “.We couldn’t get the knife out since the back of the knife was jagged and pulling  it out would have caused a lot more damage. But all along the way he was stable. We kept talking and I kept encouraging him to hang on and he promised he would try.”
Somewhere along the hectic  ride  a government-owned vehicle took over in the rescue attempt but the road was so bad that they had to exit the vehicle many times to get it unstuck.
“We had to  resort to the use of  a winch to get the vehicle  out of the deep ruts.
Trim said that they  arrived at Mahdia around 02:00h yesterday and then began a long and frustrating task to get an emergency flight in.
“The aircraft people were saying that the cloud cover over Mahdia could be a problem and they kept hesitating until around 14:00h when an aircraft arrived.”
The wait at Ogle Aerodrome for an ambulance lasted  over an hour and by the time it arrived, Semple was dead.
Meanwhile, the murder suspects  were up to yesterday afternoon still at large.
Police at Mahdia were yesterday mobilizing a team to get  to Blackwater to conduct investigations into the fatal stabbing.
One source reported that this was a major undertaking, since the price for the hire of a 4×4 vehicle to get to Blackwater from Mahdia was a minimum of $130,000.
Of his friend Semple, Trim said yesterday: “He tried his best to “hang in” but the delays were too much for him to handle.”
Reports said that Semple is survived by a wife and a two-year-old son.