Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

What was sup­posed to have been a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion turned in­to sor­row af­ter 14-year-old Sameer Rag­bir drowned at a beach in Ma­yaro on Mon­day.

He was at the near­by Sun­set Beach Re­sort cel­e­brat­ing his sis­ter’s 18th birth­day when he de­cid­ed to go for a sea bath.

The sib­lings, along with an­oth­er sis­ter, left their Clax­ton Bay home ear­li­er that day to go to the re­sort.

They were ac­com­pa­nied by his sis­ters’ two male friends, and they had planned to spend the night at the re­sort.

Ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that around 3.30 pm, Sameer was in the wa­ter with his sis­ter and her boyfriend when he be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and sub­merged about 200 feet from the shore­line.

Re­call­ing that he at­tempt­ed to res­cue Sameer, Joshua Wil­son said he went to the beach to play foot­ball with some friends from the area.

“While I wait­ing for them to come to sweat, I was sit­ting in front of Sun­set Beach Re­sort.

“I ob­served three young adults bathing in the wa­ter, and af­ter a few min­utes, one of them start­ed drown­ing.

“The next two peo­ple who was with him left him to come on the shore, and the wa­ter even­tu­al­ly went with him. I made an at­tempt to save him, but the cur­rent was just too strong, and he had no ex­pe­ri­ence to try and help him­self, and me go­ing to put my­self there might have made it even worse, so I try, but I wasn’t able.”

Wil­son said when he en­tered the wa­ter to try to help Sameer, it was 3.31 pm.

“When I reach close to him, he was cry­ing,” re­called Wil­son.

Fif­teen min­utes lat­er, he couldn’t see Sameer any­more.

Sameer’s fa­ther, Ryan Rag­bir, re­called the last con­ver­sa­tion with his son be­fore he left home on Mon­day.

“I just tell him take his time and don’t get in­to any trou­ble,” Rag­bir said.

He said his son loved the beach.

“We are cur­rent­ly still here. We have had no suc­cess with re­spect to lo­cat­ing any­thing to do with Sameer,” said Ramb­harat, who ex­plained that they cov­ered two kilo­me­tres north and south of where the boy had dis­ap­peared. Guardian Me­dia was told that the re­sort own­er of­fered the fam­i­ly free ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals while the search con­tin­ued for Sameer.

Sameer’s par­ents spent the night in Ma­yaro and were on the beach with oth­er rel­a­tives ear­ly this morn­ing, pray­ing that he was found. 

Sameer’s moth­er made of­fer­ings and bared her breast to the sea. It is wide­ly be­lieved that when this rit­u­al is done, the Moth­er of the Ocean will re­turn those lost at sea.

Mean­while, the Hunters Search and Res­cue Teams, led by Val­lence Ramb­harat and Sham­sudeen Ayube, were still search­ing for Sameer yes­ter­day. Ramb­harat told Guardian Me­dia they re­sumed their search­es along the shore­line around 4 am yes­ter­day.

Ma­yaro po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.