Determined to find out how her only child, 28-year-old Dylan Maharaj, was killed, a South Oropouche mother yesterday pleaded for answers. Grief-stricken and heartbroken, Vashti Singh could not hold back her tears during an interview with reporters at her home yesterday.
Maharaj, an AC technician, from Dow Village, South Oropouche, went to Jangal forest in Vessigny Village, La Brea, with his friend Damien Dookie, 23, and another friend to hunt around 10.30 pm on Friday.
His friend told police that Maharaj was hunting about 200 feet away from him when he heard a gunshot. He called out to Maharaj but got no answer, and on checking, he saw him holding his right side chest bleeding.
Dookie said he called his boss and friends to assist in bringing him out of the forest.
The EHS ambulance took Maharaj to the Point Fortin Area Hospital where he was declared dead around 2.15 am.
His cousin Brandon Badressingh said initially they were told that Maharaj fell off a scaffolding which they had erected in the forest to hunt. He immediately went to the forest and walked for about an hour before he found his relative on the ground bleeding.
He said Maharaj lost consciousnesses.
“We didn’t run, we was toting him because he was bleeding plenty and he was only slipping out.”
Singh said her son, who had a one-month-old baby and a two-year-old daughter, had a passion for hunting.
“I don’t know what it is but what I know somebody kill my child in the bush,” she claimed.
“Everybody out there, happy. No, no, something more than that. Something else more than that with my child. My child he loved the bush. Growing up as a child he always in the bush or he have hunting dogs in the back here.”
Referring to Maharaj as her blessing, Singh said she had four other sons who died from natural causes as babies.
“I work very hard to mind my child. I try to put up a foundation for them here, build a house for them, just for them to be happy. I bought everything for my child. I buy a car for him,” she sobbed.
Officers of the Homicide Bureau of Investigation Region 3 and South Western police are investigating.