A 55-year-old man died af­ter he was elec­tro­cut­ed while work­ing on a rooftop at his home in Plum Mi­tan, Biche, on Wednes­day.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as An­tho­ny Simp­son Ba­boolal of 7mm LP 66 Plum Mi­tan.

Po­lice said that at 3 pm, Ba­boolal was at­tend­ing to elec­tri­cal wires on the roof of a small wood­en stor­age struc­ture next to his home.

Rel­a­tives re­port­ed hear­ing a scream. Ba­boolal’s son, 21-year-old Aidan Ba­boolal, at­tempt­ed to as­sist by climb­ing an eight-foot met­al lad­der but al­so re­ceived an elec­tri­cal shock and was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal for ob­ser­va­tion. The se­nior Ba­boolal was lat­er seen ly­ing mo­tion­less on the gal­vanised rooftop.

Ba­boolal’s oth­er son, An­to­nio, said the fam­i­ly ini­tial­ly be­lieved his fa­ther had sur­vived the shock.

“I thought he was just un­con­scious, knocked out, with a small shock. I thought he would have sur­vived. I didn’t know he passed away,” he said.

When of­fi­cers ar­rived, Ba­boolal was found ly­ing on his back be­neath ex­posed live elec­tri­cal wires. He was bare­foot and bare­back, wear­ing salmon-coloured trousers and black box­ers.

A wrist­watch was on his left hand, and a met­al nip­per was found near his right hand. T&TEC per­son­nel lat­er made the area safe.

An­to­nio said his broth­er Aidan re­mains hos­pi­talised but is con­scious and in bet­ter spir­its.

“He see every­thing, and he wit­nessed every­thing. He’s still in the hos­pi­tal, they keep­ing him for ob­ser­va­tion,” he said.

An­to­nio be­lieves his fa­ther may have for­got­ten to un­plug a live wire be­fore cut­ting it.

“I think he got light in front of the house, so that’s why he hooked up this piece of wire here. But ap­par­ent­ly he for­got to un­plug it. I don’t know what he was study­ing if his head was hot. Look, the pli­ers still there,” he said.

“Yeah, if he did re­mem­ber to take out the plug, he might have had a 50-50 chance of sur­viv­ing. I still feel he would have been there alive.”

He de­scribed his fa­ther as a help­ful man who en­joyed work­ing in his gar­den and said he had giv­en his life to Christ and stopped drink­ing six years ago.

“We can’t sleep, be­cause every time we just close here, we see him on top of the shed. I tell my mom, af­ter the fu­ner­al I’ll break down the shed so she wouldn’t get that vi­sion,” he said.