RALPH BAN­WARIE

A 56-year-old fa­ther of three drowned while bathing in a man-made pond at North Oropouche, San­gre Grande, on Sat­ur­day night, dur­ing a swim with friends.

He has been iden­ti­fied as Frank Men­doza.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 8.15 pm, Der­rick An­drews, 40, of San­gre Chiq­ui­to, ar­rived at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion and re­port­ed that he and co-work­ers Frank Men­doza and Jose Pare­des went to Al­abaster Gar­dens, North Oropouche, San­gre Grande, to of­fload bush and de­bris af­ter do­ing work in Mal­abar and San­gre Grande.

Af­ter com­plet­ing their work, Men­doza in­di­cat­ed his in­ter­est in go­ing for a swim in a near­by man­made pond/pool owned by his boss at North Oropouche.

The ve­hi­cle stopped at the des­ti­na­tion and Men­doza im­me­di­ate­ly got out and pro­ceed­ed to bathe in the pond. How­ev­er, he was lat­er ob­served ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some chal­lenges in the wa­ter.

His co-work­ers, An­drews and Pare­des, made at­tempts to as­sist him but were un­suc­cess­ful. Men­doza was even­tu­al­ly found and tak­en out of the pond with the as­sis­tance of oth­er work­ers but was un­re­spon­sive af­ter CPR was per­formed. He was then rushed to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead by doc­tors.

A post-mortem is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed on Men­doza’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, this week.

Sgt Leon of San­gre Grande CID is con­tin­u­ing in­quires.