A POST-MORTEM is likely to be performed today on 13-year-old Nicholas Boston, whose lifeless body was fished from a trench at the Sparendaam, East Coast Demerara backlands on Sunday. He reportedly died around 10:30 hrs.

Tearful as she spoke at her home in Second Street, Sparendaam yesterday, his mother Natasha De Freitas said she learnt that Nicholas was out in their yard playing with his siblings and cousins, when two of his classmates came by and urged him to go swimming in the nearby canal with them.

He joined them and, together, they went to the trench.  This was apparently the request that cost him his life.

The distraught mother said she learnt that the friends where challenging him to demonstrate his swimming skills by ‘back flicking’ and plunging into the trench.

He plunged, on being challenged, the children in the neighbourhood said, but failed to resurface. After waiting a while and still not seeing him, they reportedly raised an alarm and an elderly man came and joined the search. Soon after, the man reportedly brought up Nicholas’ lifeless body and placed it on a bridge.

His neck appeared to be broken, his mother recounted, adding that it was limp and going round and round. Nicholas was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Recounting the developments on Sunday morning, Natasha said she was at the family shop in Prince William Street, Plaisance, and called Nicholas to bring something to the shop for her. He quickly complied and later returned home. It was while he was at home playing Phagwah with his siblings and friends that he was called away to swim.

The woman said that shortly after 10:00 hrs, she remembered Nicholas and enquired where he had gone. His siblings were just making enquiries when his 12-year-old sister, Lakesha, came running towards her, stating, “Nicholas gone down in de water and not coming up back.”

Hysterical, his mother, stepfather Akeem Springer and others raced to the scene, where their worst fears turned out to be true: He was dead.

The second of six children to his mother, he is also survived by his father, Gary Boston, two brothers and three sisters.

Trying with little success to maintain composure, his mother recalled that Nicholas was a very caring and helpful child who could always be depended on to lend a hand when needed in the home. “He would help in the home and even help in the shop when not in school. Even if it’s past midnight, he would remain there to help his stepfather,” she tearfully recalled.

Meanwhile, for his siblings who cherish every memory of their good times together, it was a most agonizing experience, as they tried to brace themselves for the days ahead without him. And  the other youths in the neighbourhood, joining their grief, hung tiny black flags on trees, lining the route from where the tragedy happened, to  his home a few rods away.