– sudden death leaves members of a family still reeling in disbelief

“IT IS hard as it is to come to terms with the death of Ronaldo Gomes, our 18-year-old loved one, but it is even harder to know after more than three weeks justice still seem far away,” were the words of one of the relatives of the young man who perished in the waters at the Splashmins Fun Park.

Relatives and friends of Gomes of the ‘#justiceforronaldogomes’ took to the picket line yet again, this time at the Splashmins Fun Park on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway on Sunday of August 5, holding several placards in which they were asking for justice and speedy investigations. They marched in silence.

They had earlier protested at the Ashmins Store on High Street and subsequently at the Hadfield Street Office of Splashmins.

One of the cousins told the Guyana Chronicle that Gomes was a very strong swimmer, but even though he spent most of the day at the park, he only decided to go into the creek around four o’clock in the afternoon to take a swim. She reported that after an hour had passed and they did not see him return they went in search of him and after a long and meticulous search, they decided to report him missing to the management of the Park.

“We were not well received by the management, who brushed us off by saying that the boy must have gone off with a girlfriend. However, after some back and forth with the searching, we left at about 6:30pm, only to get a call a little while after telling us that the body was found,” the relative told this newspaper.

The relatives said that though their cousin went beyond the barricade rope, he would not have felt that he was in any danger or going against any of the rules of the Park, since all the sign by the rope indicated was that it was five feet of water. “… for people who cannot swim well, this would have been a caution, but anyone like our cousin, being a good swimmer, he had nothing to fear so it was easy for him to go out a bit further,” they offered.

According to his immediate relatives, all evidence indicated that he was struck around the neck and face by a sharp instrument, which was later identified as a jet-ski plying the waters in the area. This resulted in an outing at the Fun Park turning into a heart-rending situation for a Georgetown family.

Meanwhile, throughout the protest, which lasted for over two hours, management of the fun park did not make themselves available for any form of comments. However, the police were called in by the management of the park to observe.