Two happy endings in a week of sad stories

Oct 11, 2010 News

By Michael Jordan

First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. I love stories with a touch of danger and intrigue. An unsolved case or rushing to the scene of a shootout between police and gunmen. They get the adrenaline flowing.

Oslyn Richards

But sometimes the murder and mayhem get to you, and these past few years, it has been a little too much.
The past few weeks are a perfect example. A young woman dragged to her death by a cell phone thief. Three separate, unsolved drive-by shootings that claimed eight lives. Then, as if to show that things could get worse, came the sordid, sad story of 16-year-old Neesa Lalita Gopaul, bludgeoned to death and stuffed in a suitcase.
Then, last week, two stories came to me. Just days after, on Tuesday last, an Albouystown resident came in to Kaieteur News. Tearfully, he related that his 28-year-old daughter, who was in an advanced state of pregnancy, had left her home after a dispute with her husband.
Now she was missing.
He left a photograph with me, and I reassured him that we would publish the story. But the story had an ominous ring to it. He had told me that his daughter was last seen wandering near Timehri. Like him, I feared the worse.
That very night, we got another disturbing call. A pregnant woman had been found dead in a Sophia house.
There were indications that she might have been murdered, so, with the vague directions I had received, I headed to Sophia in a taxi.
I had forgotten everything about the GuyExpo celebrations. We were forced to a crawl after being caught in traffic heading to the Sophia site.
Eventually, we reached ‘C’ Field, Sophia, where the woman was supposed to have died. But no one seemed to have heard about the incident. I began to surmise that the call had been a hoax. We decided to call it a night and we picked up a family that was going to Guy Expo. But as we were heading out of Sophia, I decided to make one more try.
I exited the car and asked a woman who was approaching us.
She immediately acknowledged that she knew the victim, who lived in her neighbourhood. She accompanied me across two rickety bridges into ‘D’ Field, Sophia.

A neighbour with the rescued baby

We eventually came to a small house where the victim, known only as Sharon, had lived. A hearse had already removed the body.
I was told that the woman had apparently died while delivering her baby, but that the baby could not be found.
A man, who I later identified as Neville Corbin, gave the father a flashlight. Some of the residents claimed that hey had heard cries in the bushes in the couple’s yard.
The two men then began searching in the bushes, and eventually, Mr. Corbin spotted the newborn boy. Miraculously, after at least three hours, he was still alive.
The only transportation available was the taxi that had brought me to the area, so I offered to take the baby to a hospital.
A woman from the area took the baby and agreed to accompany me. She sat in the back seat. I could hear the baby’s faint cries. I could hear the woman praying and pleading with the baby to hang on.
The driver took a shortcut that took us out of Sophia. On impulse, I decided to head for the Davis Memorial Hospital, which was closer.
The baby was still alive when we reached there, and the nurses immediately placed him in an incubator. Apparently, we had arrived in the nick of time, since one of the staff remarked that he had begun to turn a bluish colour.
He remained at the hospital for two days before being transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
He was still in good health up to yesterday.
As Mr. Corbin remarked, “this baby come to live.”
But that was not the only good news I got.
The following day, I learned that the pregnant woman who had been missing had been found. Someone who had read my story spotted her wandering at Timehri and contacted her family.
And what has all of this taught me?
It has taught me that the best satisfaction I may derive as a journalist is not necessarily from breaking a story, but from bringing happiness to others.