Maharanie Ramnarine, a hotel manager, and the aunt of 7-year-old Kareena Persaud, a student of the Skeldon Primary School, described the child’s death as an accident. Persaud died on January 12, after a sliding metal gate weighing an estimated 250 pounds allegedly on her.
The incident occurred at the Taj Mahal Hotel and Bar, in No. 79 Village, Corriverton at around 20:30h. Ramnarine said she was about to lock her gate when the child told her she wanted to take a ride on the hotel’s elevator.
“That afternoon, I was going to lock my gate, and she said, “Mommy, I am going and take a ride on the elevator.” I watched, I saw her. But I didn’t watch back to see where she gone, but I hear the gate [fell] so I turned back, by the time I run she was just under the gate, but I alone couldn’t lift the gate from her so when I scream and I holla neighbours run, so when the neighbours come we all joined to get the gate off her and we rushed her to the hospital and she was pronounced dead. Is just an accident is not like somebody do her something,” Ramnarine said during an interview with Guyana Daily News.
According to the 40-year-old manager, she began caring for the child when she was just two years old.
Ramnarine went on to disclose that she has been working for her uncle, Tejkumar Persaud (also known as Ravo), the hotel’s owner, for almost a year. She moved from Essequibo and brought Persaud to Berbice to care for her. They occupied a self-contained room at the hotel.
However, about a week ago, she rented a house at No. 77 Village Housing Scheme, Corriverton, Berbice, but she and the child spent most of their time at the hotel due to her job.
“She was a very joyful and brilliant child. She’s always jolly to everybody. She was a child who always wanted to do what I was doing. If I wash, she will say, “Mommy, let me wash with you.” It is very, very hard because I took her since she was two years old and from then to now it is me and she alone.
We eat together, we sleep together, we wake together, when she goes to school, then is when we separate, when she comes back home, we back together. She was in this compound like a princess, and she had a good relationship with the people in the community,” the grieving woman further said.
Police are investigating.
