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.