–News leaves family members devastated

THE swimming activities of a group of approximately 20 teenagers, comprising final year and former students of St. Stanislaus College, ended tragically at the Princess Hotel Swimming Pool on Saturday with the death of 17-year-old Shamar Edwards, who plunged into the pool but came out dead.Edwards, of East Ruimveldt, Georgetown, had been preparing to write the CAPE examinations next June.
Others from the group related to the Guyana Chronicle that they had planned the outing about a week in advance, and had all turned up at the hotel rather excited and prepared for a great afternoon swimming together. They recalled commencing swimming activities at around 14:00 hrs, and tragedy striking at around 15:00 hrs, when Shamar plunged into the pool.
He had apparently hit his head, because his body shot back up, and rescuers were able to pull him out of the water and try administering artificial resuscitation before rushing him to the Diamond Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
The horrifying news was communicated to his family, and his mother, Ms Marcie Duke, who works at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport at Timehri, became hysterical. However, the word she had received was that Shamar was swimming at the pool and had ‘nearly drowned’. The terrified mother hastened to the Diamond Hospital, but as she now recollects, on that occasion, it was ‘a journey that was not coming to an end.’
When she arrived there, other family members and his friends were at the hospital, and she was taken inside to see him. But tragically, it was neither a limp nor resuscitating person she beheld, but a dead youth. Shamar was already dead, and his mother fainted at the sight.
The hearse took Shamar’s lifeless body to the Lyken Funeral Parlour at about 23:00hrs.
The mother was still in a state of shock when she spoke with this newspaper at her home yesterday, Shamar’s classmates huddling on the solemn occasion. An anguished Marcie told of the pain of losing her eldest son, and reminisced on the good times they had shared in the home. She spoke of the effort she had put into the upbringing of Shamar, his brother and sister, and how the family had been looking forward to having Shamar write the CAPE examination, anticipating good results.
Shamar, she said, had been a member of the St. George’s Cathedral Choir, having previously served as an altar boy. Before leaving for the pool, he had prepared his clothes for Sunday mass the following day, and was looking forward to his usual participation in the choir the following morning, but that, most regrettably, was not to be.
“Shamar was a wonderful person. He was quiet and pleasant, but was a very jovial child. He was well grounded in his faith, and was an inspiration to others,” his distraught mother recalled.
The young man is survived by his father, Kwame Edwards, and mother, Marcie Duke; one sister, one brother; grandmother, Wendy Griffith; and other relatives and friends.

(By Shirley Thomas)