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UNASUR detention triggers man’s death

Dec 08, 2010 News

The move by government to clear the streets of Georgetown of mentally ill and destitute persons in time for the recently held Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) summit in Georgetown has resulted in one of those persons meeting their demise.
The unidentified body that was fished out of the Canje River on Monday morning has since been identified as 37-year-old Dwayne Vieira. No address was given.
Vieira was identified yesterday morning, by personnel of the National Psychiatric Hospital, as a patient of that institution. The man went missing on Saturday, last, after he had broken out of the facility and escaped through some bushes – in an obvious bid to return to Georgetown.
According to information reaching Kaieteur News, Vieira was one of over 25 persons (many of them deportees) who were rounded up in Georgetown and bundled off to the Psychiatric Hospital as the authorities tried to rid the city of mentally-ill and destitute persons.
According to a source, this is a normal practice.
“They would do it without a warning. Whenever there is a big activity in Georgetown they would just pick these people up and dump them here. Right now the institution is overcrowded and it is not safe to work at all. Many of these people are not mentally ill and not screened or tested before they are dumped here. It is not safe at all. One of these same ‘chaps’ had made a ‘juker’ and had it wrapped in a piece of cloth in his back pocket. This new group is violent and is always threatening to harm persons. This is the kind of conditions those nurses have to work under.”
Vieira, since he was taken there, kept saying that he is no mad man and he is from Georgetown and he will have to get back at all cost. On Saturday, around 11:00 hrs, another patient saw when he (Vieira) hit out some boards and escaped through a space in the vents at the top of one of the wards. He then escaped through some dense bush aback of the institution.
Efforts were made to locate him, but to no avail.  Another source said that some of the inmates would usually say that the hardest thing is to cross the Canje River and everything would be alright, since it was highly unlikely that Vieira would attempt to swim across.
Investigators told this publication that the man had no knowledge of the area, and after running through the bushes apparently mistook the Canje River for a trench and attempted to swim across in his escape bid. He failed.
The officials are questioning what happened to the Halfway House that was supposed to be constructed to facilitate destitute and homeless people, and lamented the lack of a proper programme to treat these persons. The police are asking relatives of Dwayne Vieira to make contact with them as early as possible.

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