A 49-year-old habitual drinker of Lot 478 Belvedere, Corentyne, Berbice drowned after he fell into a canal on Wednesday. The man identified as Keshonauth Ramnarace was found around 16:00 hrs face down in the canal by passersby, who alerted his relatives.

According to Ramnarace’s daughter-in-law, Lydia Outar, he left home around 05:30hrs on Tuesday and was allegedly imbibing. She said that when her relatives arrived at the area where Ramnarace died villagers had already removed the body from the trench.

“We were told, by eyewitnesses, that he was drinking since yesterday morning, and he was coming home in the afternoon, and he fell down a few times off his bicycle and bruised himself, so they picked him up and took him by a relative of ours to relax a bit,” Outar stated.

She said that Ramnarace only spent some 10 minutes by the relative’s home and left.

“He told them he wants to go home so he left and went a little distance away and probably fell down where no one saw him and rolled into the trench. I guess because of his state, he could not get up and he drowned. After sometime, people started to pass and they noticed the bicycle and then him in the trench and raised an alarm,” she said.

The police were notified and the body was subsequently taken to the Port Mourant Hospital where he was pronounced dead. A post-mortem is scheduled for Friday.