A men­tal­ly chal­lenged man fell to his death in a stair­case at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's Nel­son Street Plan­nings in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, short­ly 2 pm res­i­dents heard a loud sound com­ing from the stair­case. When they in­ves­ti­gat­ed they found Clement Hakim, 59, dead along­side the stair­way. Res­i­dents said they heard no com­mo­tion pri­or to hear­ing him fall.

Po­lice have ruled his death as ac­ci­den­tal as they had no ev­i­dence to sug­gest he was pushed.

His sis­ter-in-law Meerz­i­na Hakim said she learnt of his death af­ter re­turn­ing from lunchtime mass at the Rosary Church on Char­lotte Street at around 1.45 pm. She told the T&T Guardian her broth­er-in-law would usu­al­ly be left in the care of a friend at a neigh­bour­ing build­ing when they went out. How­ev­er, that neigh­bour left on va­ca­tion last week and he was left on his own at the Nel­son Street build­ing.

It is be­lieved he wan­dered in­to the stair­case, lost his bal­ance on the top storey and fell.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer took over two hours to view the body. Of­fi­cers from the Besson Street are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.