Amidst pandemonium, hysteria and agonizing wails from a large crowd of emotionally charged West Berbice residents, the tiny, lifeless body of a toddler was pulled from the back seat of a car in which he had been accidentally locked for more than two hours, under the sweltering heat of the mid-morning sun.
Dead is Radian Wilson, 2 years 9 months, of 29 El Dorado Village, West Coast Berbice, and pupil of the ‘Little Treasure Play School’ of Golden Fleece, West Coast Berbice.
His mother Carlotta Wilson, a school teacher, wept bitterly, breaking down occasionally, as she related to the Guyana Chronicle last night, how her son met his death.
But it was then that the power of the extended family and the warmth of country folk became evident, as her mother, children and other villagers stood by her side to offer her support in her darkest hour.
The distraught mother recalled that her child is usually taken to play school every day by special transportation. However, because the driver of the car was unavailable yesterday, she asked a neighbour, Teacher Mayfield Bob-Fraser, to take him in her car and drop him off at his baby sitter, Donna Mingo, en route to her work place – the National AIDS Programme at Fort Wellington.
As the car was driving off, the mother recounted, she called the woman again, to ‘please remember to drop my child off at his baby-sitter. I shook my baby’s hand, kissed him and said bye-bye to him, and he waved back at me.”
It was the last time she saw her son alive.
Wilson said that around 09:55h she called her friend and asked about her son, but was shocked when the woman responded that her child did not attend school yesterday.  The mother quickly assured her that she did send Radian to School.
“They searched the school, back and front but did not find him,” the anxious mother recalled.  On hearing of this, Wilson’s colleagues at school encouraged her to go immediately in search of her child. Meanwhile, she continued trying to reach the woman in whose care she had entrusted her child to be taken to Play-school, but to no avail. She eventually learnt that the woman, Ms. Bob-Fraser had to travel to Rosignol Health Centre in the execution of her duties, and was  nowhere in the Fort Wellington compound.
Wilson said when eventually she reached the woman by phone and enquired what she had done with her child, the woman reacted in shock, and phone line went ‘dead’.
“I repeated the question and in the background I could immediately hear women’s reaction, asking her how could she forget the woman’s child in the locked car.”
The mother hastened to the Fort Wellington Hospital only to see pregnant mothers from the PMTCT Programme  – some coming out of the yard, tearfully, saying: “Ow me God, that heat in de car alone kill that child.”
Frantically, she began making enquiries at the hospital compound and was told “Right now, everybody get send home; they lock up de hospital because a child just dead in a car.”
Still in denial, Wilson could not accept that it was her child they were speaking about, and enquired of the nurses.
Breaking down again in tears as she spoke last night, Wilson said, “When I asked the nurses for my baby, they said, ‘Calm down, calm down, yuh baby okay,’ but it was not so.”
A few moments later, the nurses took her to a dressing room and showed her the child. It was Radian and he was dead.  Mrs. Wilson collapsed.
Soon after, Bob-Fraser came along and both she and the toddler’s mother collapsed and had to be given emergency treatment. Nurses checked their blood pressure and kept them under surveillance for a while at the hospital.  By then, it was around noon.
The matter was reported to the police who immediately commenced investigations.  Wilson was later taken home by relatives.
The child is survived by his parents Carletta and Ewart Wilson; maternal grand parents, Roy and Hazel Leitch; paternal grandmother Curlene Wilson; two  brothers and one sister.