The Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF) says the death of 11-year-old Adri­ana Younge has now been of­fi­cial­ly ruled a drown­ing, with no signs of foul play.

It said the po­si­tion fol­lows the fi­nal post­mortem re­port sub­mit­ted ear­li­er this week by the three in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned pathol­o­gists.

The GPF said that a com­pre­hen­sive post­mortem ex­am­i­na­tion—in­clud­ing tox­i­col­o­gy and DNA test­ing—was car­ried out, and that the find­ings were: no signs of acute in­jury or trau­ma present; the tox­i­col­o­gy re­sults showed ethanol lev­els con­sis­tent with post­mortem de­com­po­si­tion; and that sex­u­al as­sault kit and DNA analy­sis for po­ten­tial sus­pects were neg­a­tive.

In ad­di­tion, the GPF said the find­ings in­di­cat­ed that the skin and air­way changes were in line with pro­longed sub­mer­sion and drown­ing, and that there was no ev­i­dence of re­straint, strug­gle, re­moval, and re­turn of the body.

The pathol­o­gists con­clud­ed that Younge drowned, like­ly sank to the bot­tom of the pool, and lat­er sur­faced due to nat­ur­al de­com­po­si­tion process­es com­mon in trop­i­cal cli­mates.

Younge’s body was dis­cov­ered on April 24, 2025, in the swim­ming pool of the Dou­ble Day In­ter­na­tion­al Ho­tel. The child was re­port­ed­ly last seen by her grand­moth­er on April 23, 2025, in the ho­tel’s swim­ming pool. Her body was found float­ing in the same pool the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

The GPF said that up­on learn­ing of the in­ci­dent, it launched a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The GPF said the child’s fam­i­ly raised sev­er­al con­cerns, cit­ing her abil­i­ty to swim and al­leg­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sex­u­al as­sault, forced drown­ing else­where, and rit­u­al­is­tic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“These con­cerns were tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and ful­ly ex­plored in col­lab­o­ra­tion with foren­sic ex­perts,” the po­lice said.

The cer­ti­fied find­ings from the au­top­sy con­firmed that her death was con­sis­tent with drown­ing, and no ev­i­dence of trau­ma, as­sault, or any oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was found.

The find­ings sup­port an ear­li­er re­port sub­mit­ted by Re­tired Cana­di­an homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tor Leonard Mc­Coshen, who had con­clud­ed that there was no foul play.

The po­lice force said they are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing the case file for sub­mis­sion to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion (DPP) for her pe­rusal and le­gal opin­ion.

In its state­ment, the GPF ex­tend­ed its “heart­felt con­do­lences” to the Younge fam­i­ly, adding that it re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and jus­tice. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)