By Shauna Jemmott

RELATIVES of 14-year-old Malika Hamilton whose body was discovered in the Hope Canal, East Coast Demerara Tuesday afternoon, suspect ‘foul play’ in her death.Hamilton of Lot 11, Two Friends Village, East Coast Demerara, and a second-year student of Hope Secondary, went missing Monday and her body was found by a ranger in the canal the following day.

While many residents of the Two Friends/Ann’s Grove area are haunted by questions of what really transpired, Hamilton’s mother Atesha Cambridge said she has reasons to suspect foul play in the death of her eldest child.

Hamilton left home to braid her hair at a cousin’s house, but never reached.

Instead, she and others went bathing in a trench not far away from her home and she never returned.

Relatives and other residents formed a search party and began looking late Monday night. Her body was discovered Tuesday afternoon in the Hope Canal, over a mile away from the East Coast public road.

Cambridge said based on stories of her daughter’s whereabouts on the last day she was seen alive, she was last seen in the company of a few males, heading in the direction of Hope, which is two villages away.

The teenager’s grandmother Dorrel Cambridge told the press that on Tuesday morning while searching for her missing granddaughter she asked a man whose name was given as ‘Satan’ if he had seen her. She said the man told her that Malika and others were swimming with him in a trench not far away from her home, and she left to visit her other grandmother, who resides at Hope.

However, a boat operator and ranger of the Hope Canal on Wednesday told the Guyana Chronicle he transported Malika and three men, including the same man, across the canal, from Douch Four to Hope, around 13:00 hours Monday. That was the last reported time that Hamilton was seen alive. He said he saw the men attempting to loose someone else’s boat which was tied by the canal, but after he arrived they asked him to take them across instead.

“The day the girl ask me fuh cross she, nah she alone – she, a gentleman from Douch Four and two other boys from Ann’s Grove. Everybody round here see wha going on man. Normally I does cross people,” he related.

The ranger said he transported a few excavator operators to the savannah area, and was on his way out of the area with an employee on the infrastructural project when he observed something black floating in the water around the ‘Skinny Dam’ bridge at ‘Star-apple Tree’ area, where men go to catch birds.

“Whilst coming down I observe a black thing floating. I said to the gentleman ‘Is hair tha?’ and he said no man is grass come down from the Savannah.”

He returned to the area after taking the search party, which included Malika’s mom, across the canal from Hope to Douch Four and realized the teen was missing.

“Deh (search party) went over deh and they ask me fuh cross them. I cross them ova and I heading back towards the backdam just at the area where I see this thing. When I take the boat and I go, I look at it carefully and whilst going with the boat I barely get a glimpse and I spin round the boat again, and when I spin the boat, I recognize she pants.”

He said he went to the family’s house but did not know how to tell them, so he told Shellon Sampson, who visited the canal for a bath, before calling the police. The man told the Guyana Chronicle he returned to the area until police arrived and was the one to lift Malika’s body into the boat. Her skin was muddy and something else seemed unusual.

“She neck deh contrary… when I tek she out she neck deh sideways. And I was surprised because yesterday morning we going down there and me ain’t see nothing, nothing, nothing. That thing funny though man,” the boat man said.

A post-mortem examination will be performed on the body Friday.