De Abreu told the Guyana Chronicle that he was contracted to clear a plot of land which was overgrown with thick vegetation, ‘buru-buru’ bush and the unmanageable ‘Aunty Desmond’, which could not have been cut with the polythene cutter. As a result he fitted a metal grass-cutting blade to the machine and began weeding.

“I had almost finished the job when the blade on the machine ‘run slack’ and ‘fly off the brush cutter,” he related. He said the blade struck his right foot, cut through the bone.

His wife Jacqueline Ferreira, who is about six months pregnant was alone at home at the time. Fortunately, he said, their home is just about 600-700 yards away from where the weeding job was being done.

He also recalled that before leaving the house, he advised her to turn the radio off, which she did. “That is how she managed to hear my screams,” the injured man reasoned, adding that he might have bled to death, for he couldn’t move an inch from where he was by himself.

Even though pregnant and shaking with fear, she managed to walk a fair distance out of the jungle and secured a vehicle to take him to the Guyana Defence Force base at Camp Stephenson, Timehri. He was then placed into an army vehicle and transported to the GPH.

De Abreu admitted that the foot was so badly cut, it was impossible for it to be saved, and doctors at the hospital could only remove the severed foot that was hanging from a bit of skin.

The injured man said that he had been using a similar machine for more than 20 years, but added that the problem with that particular brand of brush cutter was that the blade would slacken as the weeding job progresses.