Geisha Kow­lessar

For 14-year-old Lil­ly Adiel Blaides, the last chap­ter in her "book of life" was writ­ten at 6.15 pm on Sat­ur­day.The teenag­er died of mas­sive head in­juries when a pirogue, dri­ven by a Las Cuevas fish­er­man, ploughed in­to her.Up to late yes­ter­day a 21-year-old Las Cuevas man was as­sist­ing po­lice with in­ves­ti­ga­tions.Po­lice said the teenag­er was bathing not too far from the shore­line when the pirogue's pro­peller sliced her head and parts of the body.

In­stead of as­sist­ing the teenag­er, the fish­er­man jumped ashore and ran in­to the bush­es, po­lice said.Life­guards on du­ty pulled Blaides out the wa­ter and took her to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in their am­bu­lance.She died one hour lat­er. An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be per­formed to­day.The fish­er­man, how­ev­er, was nabbed around 1.30 am af­ter a team of of­fi­cers from the North East­ern Di­vi­sion­al Task Force head­ed by In­sp Roger Alexan­der got a tip.

The man was found hid­ing in a house in Las Cuevas.Blaides' death, how­ev­er, has been ac­cept­ed by her moth­er, Ar­lene, who be­lieved her daugh­ter was in a bet­ter place.In an in­ter­view at her Tacarigua home yes­ter­day, Ar­lene, who de­scribed her­self as an ar­dent be­liev­er in the Lord, said de­spite the trag­ic cir­cum­stances it was her daugh­ter's time to leave earth.

"Every­body has a book of life and her book was writ­ten. Some peo­ple be­lieve you have to be old to die but I be­lieve my daugh­ter's time had come and she had to go. I am a be­liev­er and I have ac­cept­ed what hap­pened."God is good. I'm cop­ing," Ar­lene said.She said she did not go to the beach on Sat­ur­day but her daugh­ter went with oth­er rel­a­tives in­clud­ing her broth­er Adam, 19.

Prais­ing the life­guards for their ef­forts Ar­lene said, "They re­al­ly did all they could but I be­lieved my daugh­ter passed while she was in tran­sit. When I saw my daugh­ter her head was ban­daged."Blaides, a stu­dent of the El Do­ra­do East Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, was ex­pect­ed to en­ter form four in Sep­tem­ber."She had al­ready cho­sen her sub­jects and was sup­posed to col­lect her books. My daugh­ter was look­ing for­ward to that."

De­scrib­ing her as some­one who loved the wa­ter Ar­lene said her daugh­ter learnt to swim "from small."Blaides al­so loved art and her moth­er said the teenag­er al­so had a knack for com­put­ers.Asked if she be­lieved the boat­man did not see Blaides in the wa­ter Ar­lene said she could not make any pro­nounce­ments as she was not present when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.She be­lieved the po­lice were treat­ing the in­ci­dent as a homi­cide.

But Ar­lene hoped such an in­ci­dent nev­er oc­curs again."I be­lieve things would be put in place for some­thing like this not to hap­pen again. They should re­al­ly have lim­its to where the boats could come in be­cause if you have bathers there you should not be al­lowed there."

Pirogue mishaps

In Au­gust 2009 a US girl Paige Welsh and her moth­er Raquel were pad­dling in a two-man kayak when a 28-foot pirogue, op­er­at­ed by a sol­dier, col­lid­ed with them at Scot­land Bay, Ch­aguara­mas.Raquel had part of her back (close to her spine) ripped off and bones in her left arm were al­so shat­tered. Paige's arm was al­most sev­ered.

The ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing the Welch­es was sim­i­lar to that which oc­curred in To­ba­go in June, 2007. Yanik Ques­nel, 17, of Cas­cade, Port-of-Spain, and his girl­friend, Car­oli­no Bar­ry-La­so, 16, of Spain, were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured when they were run over by a pirogue. They were bathing sev­er­al yards from the shore­line at Pi­geon Point at the time. Yanik sus­tained a skull frac­ture, which re­sult­ed in brain in­jury, while Bar­ry-La­so suf­fered a frac­tured skull, a bro­ken arm and leg.