Reporter: Sascha Wilson
Coast Guard divers presently are at Flower Pot Beach, searching for the body of 16-year-old Iverson Thomas, who is believed to have drowned on Tuesday.
However, his grandmother, Anne Frederick, is not giving up hope that he is alive. She was among several relatives on the Pointe-a-Pierre beach, yesterday.
“I haven’t given up hope,” she asserts. “Somehow, I expect to see him alive, clinging on to some rock or something. I haven’t given up hope on him.”
Meanwhile, Thomas’ mother, Michelle Ragbir, said her son could swim.
Iverson Thomas, a student of Marabella North Secondary, would have turned 17 years in July. He also was supposed to write the CSEC examinations. The teenager lived with his father not far from the beach at Plaisance Park.
Guardian Media understands Thomas and a 19-year-old friend decided to take chance and went for a swim, in breach of the COVID-19 regulations restricting the public from using the nation’s beaches. Relatives say they heard around 10 am that he got into difficulties and suspect he may have gone down in a “sink hole”.
His grandmother, Anne Frederick, made an appeal to youngsters to obey the Regulations.
“We are in the COVID, and we’re not supposed to be bathing. Children, please listen to your parents because if they say don’t go by the sea, don’t go by the sea,” she urged.
Frederick shared a close relationship with Thomas, particularly as he was her first grandchild.
