TEARS and grief filled the home of Samantha Roach on Monday, as the devastated mother recounted the final moments before her six-year-old daughter, Soraya Bourne, was killed in Sunday night’s deadly explosion at the Mobil Gas Station on Regent and King Streets, Georgetown.
Speaking to reporters at her Breda Street, Charlestown, residence, Roach said her daughter’s death has left a permanent void in her life, and pleaded for swift justice.
“I would like the people to find the man fast. I need justice. My child doesn’t deserve to die like this; I need justice, this is all I ask,” the grieving mother said through tears.
Soraya, who was just weeks away from celebrating her seventh birthday, was described as a lively, affectionate child who was excitedly counting down to her big day.
“My daughter is only six; weeks from now she would’ve been seven… She was all excited for her birthday,” Roach said, adding:
“Every Sunday they go and buy their chicken and they come back. Before she left home, she went and buy a drink for her father. I can remember her running back into the yard, because she saw the car light on, and was hurrying to go with them.”
The family’s usual Sunday routine turned into tragedy when the car carrying Soraya and her relatives, her aunt Jenica Hooper, grandmother Yvonne Jonas, and cousins Seddia McIntosh and Reshard Lord, was destroyed in the explosion.
“They left here to go and buy chicken by KFC, and as I deh here, somebody came and told us how my niece’s car just blew up at the gas station,” Roach recalled.
“When I go to the hospital,” she said, “I keep asking for my child, and nobody answered.”
Moments later, she was confronted with the devastating sight of her daughter’s lifeless body.
“Her body was disfigured,” Roach said, her voice breaking.
“When I see her, I black out right there in the hospital.”
The grieving mother said Soraya was the youngest of her children, and her “pride and joy”.
“She is my last child; I cannot make any more,” she said softly.
“The whole Sunday she was playing with them children. She is too young to get a death like that; that is a cruel death. She got an iPad for her birthday from her aunty; she never even get to hold it. She was a joyful child. She don’t settle; she always up and out.”
The explosion, which occurred around 19:30hrs on Sunday, also injured four others, and destroyed several vehicles.
Investigators confirmed that a man of mixed ethnicity, believed to be a foreign national, was seen on surveillance footage placing a bag containing an explosive device near the gas station’s cooking gas storage area moments before the blast.
President Dr. Irfaan Ali has since ordered a full-scale investigation, while the Guyana Police Force continues to pursue the suspect, whose image has been circulated publicly.
For now, the Roach family is left to grapple with unimaginable pain, and a mother’s plea that echoes through her tears, “My child is too young to die like that; I just want justice for Soraya.”