THE body of a Rosignol man who blamed himself for causing his teenaged daughter’s death  in a road accident last Tuesday was yesterday found floating in a canal aback neighbouring Cotton Tree Village, in West Coast Berbice.The remains of Alfred Branche, 62,  was found by a search party around 11:00 hrs yesterday, five-and-a-half days after he had slipped out unnoticed from  his home  at McKenzie Street Rosignol, apparently in a state of mental anguish following the death of his daughter by accident in the car he was driving on December 23 last.

A reliable source said that there were no visible marks of violence on the body as to suggest that Branche may have died by his own hand.
Branche, who was self-employed, was said to be a very experienced driver, and very popular in his Rosignol community. For residents of Rosignol, it was  a sad sequel to a fatal road accident.
Branche  was reportedly driving a  wagon  last Tuesday night, when it collided with a parked vehicle on the Number 29 Village  Public Road,  West Coast Berbice resulting in the death of his daughter, Yonette, 16, from massive head injuries.
Relatives  say that the  man had been continuously  distraught  and inconsolable  after the accidental death of his daughter.
“She had been the apple of his eye,” another daughter, and sister of the deceased teenager,  Shonette said.
He left his  home at around  08:00 hrs on  Christmas Eve Day.
A  resident of Rosignol  subsequently informed  the family that he  had seen the missing man bare headed, heading into the backdam/wooded area  behind Rosignol  earlier on that day.
Search parties of concerned villagers had been combing the back-lands of Rosignol and Cotton Tree since Christmas Eve Day, the search culminating  in the discovery yesterday.
His body is at the mortuary at Fort Wellington Cottage  Hospital awaiting post mortem.
The West Berbice Police are investigating. The teenaged daughter is yet to be buried.
Relatives of the dead man, who now have to prepare for two funerals instead of one, were too numb with grief to talk intelligibly with the Guyana Chronicle at the time of calls yesterday.
Yonette Branche, 16,  was a student of the New Amsterdam Multilateral School,  and had gone with her parents to uplift a barrel and two boxes  of gifts sent her by an aunt who lives overseas.
The family had collected the items in Georgetown and were on their way home around 20:00 hrs on Tuesday, the day before Christmas Eve, when the wagon driven by her  father  collided with a parked Canter Lorry on the side of the road at Number 29 Village.
Reports suggest that the older Branche had been dazzled by the lights of an oncoming vehicle and had pulled into the corner of the road without seeing the vehicle parked  there.

(By Clifford Stanley)