Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor of the Paria div­ing tragedy, cred­its his de­ceased col­leagues for di­rect­ing him out of the pipeline he had been sucked in­to on Feb­ru­ary 25.

Boodram, who was the first wit­ness to give ev­i­dence in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the tragedy on Tues­day morn­ing, said he was in fight for flight mode as he tried to get out of the pipe.

He said he promised the men sev­er­al times that he wasn't leav­ing them but that he was go­ing to get help.

Dur­ing con­ver­sa­tions with Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior and Yusuf Hen­ry in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the ac­ci­dent Boodram said he was told they had been sucked in­to the pipe feet-first.

This in­for­ma­tion al­lowed him to move for­ward in­stead of mov­ing back­ward and even­tu­al­ly led him out of the pipe.

In giv­ing his ev­i­dence, Boodram broke down sev­er­al times, say­ing the de­tails of that fate­ful day con­tin­ue to haunt him.

"I failed them," he cried.

Boodram said when he found Kur­ban, Ali Ju­nior and Hen­ry, Rishi "Blacks" Na­gas­sar was not with them. He said he and the three oth­er men formed a hu­man chain and were mak­ing their way slow­ly along the pipe. How­ev­er, he said sev­er­al parts of the pipe were flood­ed and he even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to leave Kur­ban, Ali Ju­nior and Hen­ry be­hind to try to get help.

Boodram said Ali Ju­nior begged him to stay with them but he could not.

"I told him, we have to get out of here," Boodram tes­ti­fied.

He wept as he re­called get­ting to the top of the pipeline and not find­ing any res­cue wait­ing for him. He said when he was res­cued he told them his col­leagues were still alive in the pipeline.

Boodram broke down again as he re­called be­ing tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, He said there was no prepa­ra­tion for his ar­rival.

He said he was placed in a room with oth­er pa­tients who had COVID-19. He said a woman died in his bed­room that day.

He was al­so livid no one from Paria had called his wife to alert her that there had been an ac­ci­dent.

Boodram was cross ex­am­ined by at­tor­neys for dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers as the en­quiry con­tin­ued in­to the af­ter­noon.