KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite ef­forts to re­lo­cate the Man­ning Fete from atop the San Fer­nan­do Hill to the base fol­low­ing Re­nee Mitchell’s fa­tal fall last Sat­ur­day, or­gan­is­ers will con­tin­ue with the orig­i­nal venue.

How­ev­er, the fete’s co-or­di­na­tor, Mon Re­pos/Navet coun­cil­lor Nigel Cout­ti­er, said there will be a fence around the perime­ter of the fete as an added safe­ty mea­sure.

“We al­ready had EMA ap­proval, dance­hall and bar li­cences for the hill, so the Fire Ser­vice ad­vised us to block off cer­tain ar­eas, and a fenc­ing com­pa­ny will se­cure the perime­ter,” Cout­ti­er said.

Man­ning Fete, which was start­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter and San Fer­nan­do East MP Patrick Man­ning, re­turns af­ter a three-year hia­tus caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Cout­ti­er said giv­en Mitchell’s trag­ic death, the com­mit­tee at­tempt­ed to re­lo­cate to the base of the hill. He said San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning was con­cerned about the safe­ty of his pa­trons, so the com­mit­tee had to do every­thing nec­es­sary.

“We had a meet­ing fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent and a site vis­it with the fire de­part­ment to see what we could put in place to se­cure the area as best as we could. We had ap­provals al­ready for the hill be­cause we planned it, but based on what hap­pened last week, it was on­ly fair to have fire put ex­tra pre­cau­tions in place,” Cout­ti­er said.

Mitchell, 39, of River­side North, Corinth, died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Sun­day, sev­en hours af­ter she fell off the edge of the hill. Re­ports stat­ed that she and her boyfriend, Pe­ter Ribeiro, were at Il­lu­sion’s Solset: Su­per­no­va Pre­mi­um Drinks Fete atop the hill on Sat­ur­day when, around 11.55 pm, she went to re­lieve her­self. Mitchell went in­to a breach in the hedge lin­ing the edge of the north-east­ern side of the hill and slipped, plung­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 feet down.

Land Search and Res­cue per­son­nel rap­pelled down the precipice and reached Mitchell with­in an hour. They re­port­ed that she had mul­ti­ple in­juries, lit­tle to no move­ment in her low­er ex­trem­i­ties and was in and out of con­scious­ness. The res­cuers took al­most six hours to re­turn to the top of the hill due to the un­sta­ble ter­rain and low light­ing pos­ing a chal­lenge. She died at hos­pi­tal.