Body of another fisherman on rescue mission found
THE partly decomposed body of Richard Harvey Smith, 38, of Lot 126 Da Silva Street, Newtown, Georgetown, washed ashore at Devonshire Castle, on the Essequibo Coast, five days after the boat in which he and four others were travelling capsized on Saturday in the Pomeroon River. Police yesterday confirmed that Smith’s corpse was found around 06:30 hrs yesterday. The body is at the Suddie Hospital Mortuary awaiting a post mortem examination.
Smith’s relatives said the last time they saw him alive was when he left home for work.
Later Saturday they received the news, by way of a telephone call from the boat owner.
Smith had gone out to sea to rescue some fishermen who were victims of piracy in the Pomeroon River and they encountered difficulties due to heavy rainfall and rough waters and their vessel overturned.
The father of two also operated a fish stall aback of Stabroek Market, together with his relatives.
Some of them, including his sister, Wendy Derothe, had travelled to the Essequibo Coast to make a positive identification of the deceased after they received the information news that another body had been discovered and it fitted the description of their loved one.
One of Smith’s colleagues, Rasheed Amad Khan said  that a search party was walking along the seawall at Hampton Court, also on the Essequibo Coast, when they stumbled upon the remains and raised an alarm at about 03:30 hrs yesterday.
He said the group of fishermen and others has remained in Essequibo, trying to locate their relatives; Damodar Khemraj called ‘Raco’ and Shafeek Khan, both of whom are still missing.
However, the decomposing Kumar Narine, 43, of Lot 70 Vigilance, East Coast Demerara, drifted ashore at Hampton Court, on Tuesday about 07:45 hrs.
He was taken to Suddie Hospital mortuary to await a post mortem examination.
Police said yesterday that the body found at Hampton Court Foreshore, Essequibo, on Tuesday, February 07, 2012 has been identified to be that of Kumar Narine of Bladen Hall, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara. He was one of the missing persons from the rescue-boat that capsized off the Suddie Coast during the night of February 04, 2012.
Narine, a fish vendor; Khan, a taxi driver; Khemraj and Smith, together with the lone survivor, Ganeshwar Reddy known as ‘Smallie’, all departed from Meadow Bank Wharf in Georgetown, in a vessel with an additional outboard engine, to rescue one of the fishing crews that was attacked and robbed by armed men in the Pomeroon River.
Subsequent reports indicate that, during Saturday night, the boat capsized somewhere off Suddie Coast and only Reddy managed to reach shore at Exmouth, another place on the Essequibo Coast, about 15:45 hrs on Sunday and he was admitted a patient at Suddie Hospital.
Pirates targeted approximately 15 fishing boats off the coast of  the Pomeroon River in a spate of attacks which started around 08:00 hrs on Friday and ended around the same time Saturday.
The fishermen, numbering 19, are all alive, having been rescued and hospitalised. They recounted tales of a harrowing ordeal at the hands of the pirates, who beat them with cutlasses and locked them in a small cabin for hours without food and water.