KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite re­ports that a 26-year-old New Grant man was beat­en be­fore be­ing found dead near his home, in­ves­ti­ga­tors say they are await­ing the re­sults of an au­top­sy be­fore de­ter­min­ing the cause of death.

Po­lice said David Ram­lakhan was dis­cov­ered in the bush­es off School Trace. Around 4.30 pm yes­ter­day, his sis­ter con­tact­ed the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion, re­port­ing that he ap­peared to be in phys­i­cal dis­tress and re­quest­ing as­sis­tance.

Of­fi­cers re­spond­ed and ar­rived at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5.25 pm. They were met by the sis­ter, who led them about 200 feet off the east­ern side of School Trace to an over­grown area, where Ram­lakhan was found ly­ing on his back, mo­tion­less and un­re­spon­sive.

He had vis­i­ble bruis­es on his face and low­er ab­domen and was bare­foot. Of­fi­cers se­cured the scene, and a Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer lat­er pro­nounced him dead and or­dered the re­moval of the body pend­ing a post-mortem at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Po­lice con­firmed that Ram­lakhan was a pa­tient at the psy­chi­atric ward of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and had a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness, in­clud­ing epilep­tic seizures, for which he was treat­ed with Clop­ixol.