A fam­i­ly out­ing at Los Iros Beach on Sun­day turned trag­ic af­ter 57-year-old fa­ther of three Selvon Ramjit drowned.

A rel­a­tive said Ramjit of Quar­ry Vil­lage, Siparia, went in­to the sea for a swim around 3 pm but be­gan strug­gling about 15 min­utes lat­er. De­spite as­sis­tance from a life­guard to save him, Ramjit was un­re­spon­sive by the time he was brought to the shore.

Emer­gency Health Ser­vices tech­ni­cians lat­er con­firmed he had no vi­tal signs. Ramjit’s broth­er-in-law, Vishun­dath Ma­haraj, who was at the beach, re­called that Ramjit had just fin­ished eat­ing lunch and de­cid­ed to go for a swim. He said they re­alised that he was in trou­ble be­cause he was wav­ing his hands, sig­nalling for help.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said they could not get to him be­cause the un­der­wa­ter cur­rent was too strong. “That cur­rent was strong. It car­ry him about 30 to 40 feet from the shore.” He said the life­guard was on the oth­er end of the beach, sprang in­to ac­tion, and was able to bring Ramjit out of the wa­ter.

But Ma­haraj claimed CPR was not done.

“They did not do any CPR. They drag him out, put him to lie down, turn him on the side, and a lit­tle wa­ter run out, and that was it.”  

Ma­haraj be­lieves that if CPR had been per­formed, Ramjit would have sur­vived.

At­tempts to con­tact the life­guard rep­re­sen­ta­tive for a com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful. Of­fi­cers from the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.