KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Ey­on Dou­glas had planned to spend Sun­day morn­ing with his 29-year-old son Shaquile Dou­glas and fam­i­ly, mak­ing a hol­i­day cook. But, Dou­glas wants the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny to come clean on how Shaquile died while work­ing at its Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ties on Fri­day.

A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer pro­nounced Shaquile dead ap­prox­i­mate­ly three and a half hours af­ter he fell un­con­scious on a scaf­fold­ing while car­ry­ing out a weld­ing task. Dou­glas did not hold back his emo­tions when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed his home in Cleghorn Vil­lage, Princes Town, on Sat­ur­day, say­ing that he wants gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to know what Paria was do­ing to peo­ple at their fa­cil­i­ties.

It was the sec­ond dead­ly in­ci­dent at Paria this year af­ter four LCMS divers died af­ter be­ing sucked in­to a pipeline last Feb­ru­ary.

Dou­glas re­called that he was at work Fri­day morn­ing when he got a call in­form­ing them that some­thing was wrong with Shaquile. He left and ar­rived at Paria's gate af­ter 10 am, where se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers con­firmed that an am­bu­lance was on the com­pound, tend­ing to Shaquile. He wait­ed 90 min­utes at the gates with Shaquile's six-month-old son's moth­er be­fore an am­bu­lance came out. The of­fi­cers stopped the am­bu­lance and in­quired if Shaquile was in­side. How­ev­er, the medics said no and that the com­pa­ny’s am­bu­lance crew had it un­der con­trol. They wait­ed an hour again and saw an­oth­er am­bu­lance leave, but Shaquile was not in­side.

Ten min­utes lat­er, Paria's man­age­ment sent a ve­hi­cle to take them to the ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing.

Af­ter ask­ing what hap­pened to his son, he said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive re­spond­ed: “Mr Dou­glas, we tried to re­sus­ci­tate him.”

When he asked again, there was no an­swer.

Ian Douglas is demanding a full-scale investigation after his son Shaquile Douglas, died at Paria’s Point-a-Pierre facilities on Friday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Dou­glas said that af­ter 20 min­utes, he could not func­tion and left the of­fice, but two of­fi­cers asked him to re­turn.

As he reached the gate, a third am­bu­lance left, but his son was not there ei­ther. When a Fire Ser­vice am­bu­lance passed, he re­alised the sit­u­a­tion was dire.

“They just shook their heads. They watched me, and they left.”

Dou­glas had a con­tact in­side Paria who broke the trag­ic news.

“They said Dougie, your son dead in­side there long time, down on the port.”

Dou­glas said he re­turned to the of­fice with oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers and heard that medics tried every­thing, in­clud­ing de­fib­ril­la­tion.

He said it was on­ly at 3.30 pm that they told him that Shaquile was dead and his body was in the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary.

“Which am­bu­lance car­ried out my son? There were four am­bu­lances that I checked. Who car­ried out my son while I was beg­ging to see his face? No­body showed me my son, and no­body told me any­thing.”

Paria de­nies cov­er-up, says all ef­forts to re­vive Shaquile failed

In a me­dia re­lease on Fri­day, Paria said Shaquile, an em­ploy­ee of con­trac­tor Son­ny Be­har­rysingh and Sons, died sud­den­ly that morn­ing. Paria said Shaquile com­plained of feel­ing un­well while work­ing on a sev­en-foot scaf­fold struc­ture and asked to take a break. Col­leagues con­tact­ed Paria’s HSE de­part­ment, and Emer­gency Med­ical Tech­ni­cians ex­am­ined Shaquile, who was un­re­spon­sive. It said all ef­forts to re­vive him failed, and a Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer de­clared him dead at 1:10 pm.

Yes­ter­day, Paria stood by its state­ment.

How­ev­er, Dou­glas be­lieves there is a cov­er-up and sus­pects a pri­vate ve­hi­cle took his son out of the com­pound. He said Shaquile was weld­ing and told the helper that he want­ed to take a break be­cause he felt un­well and asked for a plank to sit on. When the helper re­turned, he met Shaquile ly­ing flat on the scaf­fold, froth­ing from the mouth.

The helper slapped Shaquile, try­ing to get a re­sponse, but he kept los­ing con­scious­ness. Dou­glas said those at the work site told him there was no de­fib­ril­la­tor; the medics on­ly used CPR. He said the work­ers claimed that Paria does not have spe­cialised equip­ment to re­spond to pos­si­ble in­ci­dents re­lat­ed to the type of work done there. He said his son was strong and too healthy to die of a heart at­tack at such a young age.

“You know what they told me? They hope I do not give trou­ble like the men who drowned: the divers. I am like, what do you mean by that? They said Mr Dou­glas, any­thing you want, we will give it to you. We hope you do not give trou­ble.”

A source at Paria said the com­pa­ny ex­plic­it­ly dis­putes Dou­glas' claims or that any em­ploy­ee told him that he need­ed to be­have or that they hoped he did not cause any trou­ble. The source ex­plained that be­cause of Shaquile’s age and that he died at Paria’s fa­cil­i­ty, they could not tell the fa­ther of the death un­til a DMO de­clared it. Once the po­lice got in­volved and took cus­tody of the body, Dou­glas could not view it as a mea­sure to elim­i­nate any pos­si­bil­i­ty of im­pro­pri­ety.