Family blames GPHC’s negligence for death of pregnant woman

Jan 21, 2026 News

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(Kaieteur News) – The relatives of young pregnant Marisa Eastman who died after jumping through a window at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) Sunday evening, is blaming the hospital for the woman’s death.

In a live stream on Monday via Team Mohamed’s page, members of the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party Odessa Primus, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley and leader Azruddin Mohamed met with the family who recounted the events leading up to the tragedy.

Eastman’s aunt Wendy (only name given) told the politicians that she received a call from her mother stating that her niece was hospitalised, shortly after the call she made her way down there.

“However, upon arriving there, my eldest sister, it my eldest sister there, her mom was there, and we went into the ward, and Marisa was behaving out of it. She was out of it, and in a sense that she was behaving like extraordinary. So, while she was behaving like that, she was like snatching and grabbing her mother, throw the food to me, screaming, shouting, telling me to get out, like she was out of order,” she recalled.

It came to a point where Eastman had to be held down by family members, as she had resorted to standing on the bed and screaming. During the course of her being restrained, a nurse entered the room and they enquired where the doctor who was attending to her was, Wendy recalled the nurse saying the general doctor was not there.

Luckily, she was able to speak with a psychiatric doctor around 16:00hrs, and the doctor asked her some question to try and ascertain what was going on with her niece. She explained the situation and the timeframe the behaviour started. During the conversation the gynecologist arrived and relayed that he was there in relation to the pregnancy.

“So, I was asking both of them to give her something to keep her calm, because she was really there, because literally we were Alicia was there, Alicia’s husband was there too literally holding Marisa, tried to get her stable, holding her so, um, we were trying to get her to stabilise. So, the nurses came in, and we were telling them to tie her down to the bed and begging them to tie her, strap her down to the bed. However, they was ignoring me and we can’t we were there for quite some time like that. By then was going down to like six, six thirty I assume we were there,” she added.

Shortly after a security guard informed relatives that visiting hours were over and they had to leave. They refused to do so, noting that they did not want to leave Marisa alone until she was stabilised. They requested again to have Eastman restrained or sedated so that she can calm down and possibly get some rest.

The guards kept insisting the family leave and Alicia (another aunt only name given) enquired of the guards and hospital staff who will be looking at her niece, as while she understood visiting hours had passed, they felt uncomfortable leaving Eastman in that condition

“So, we asked this question, if we leave, who’s going to be responsible? Who’s going to be looking at her when we’re not there? They gave us all hope somebody’s going to be so I left. I left because I had to go and bring back something. So, I left, I left the hospital to go and get it. I left her aunt here, and her next aunt. I leave them there, and I went to get this stuff for her,” she said.

Alicia later left to get some things for Eastman, but Eastman’s mother and another aunt remained in the hallway, at the waiting area in the vicinity of the elevator.

Wendy tearfully recounted, “I just leave on my way home, by the time I meet to the back road at the roundabout heading home, I receive a call from my mom stating that Marisa jump out the hospital window. However, I like, went out of it. I started to scream in the vehicle while driving, turn around. I called my sister, because I’m going to call my sister when I call my sister, she was over the river. I told her what Marisa just did. I left and I went back to the hospital. In hospital, went to the back, my nieces lying on the floor.”

Alicia said she got to the hospital before Wendy and she say her niece covered with a sheet and nurses surrounding her.

“Everybody stand-off, and my niece was lying there. So, I run straight in, and I go, and I lie down next to my niece, and I hug my niece, and I started crying, and nobody was coming, and I was there for hours. How long she was lying there. It had to be before, because my other sister was there when she fell. My other sister was there, and she said that it was (a good time) before they covered the body. When I meet there, it was I was there for hours too, when they came, then other family members came. She was there for hours before they moved her hours, hours, and nobody didn’t…wasn’t telling us anything,” she said.

When they actually got an update, it was to say that the hospital was awaiting the arrival of the police. “…they had some persons in this, these white clothes they came, and when they came, they put the yellow tape, and they taped, and still, she was still there for a while, and they asked us to just move back. She was there for hours,” she cried.

Wendy explained that the room that Eastman was in had two rows of three beds each, and her niece was on the middle bed in the row away from the window. She claimed GPHC staff told them that the window was locked and a nurse was in the room tending to a patient at the time of the incident.

The aunt said it is impossible no one noticed what her niece was up to because, Eastman would have had to leave her bed, run across the room and climb on the bed of another patient to be able to reach the window to open it before jumping through it.

“Why was anybody not looking at her, knowing the state she was in at the time? Why wasn’t anybody paying attention? How could you make a pregnant woman move from a bed in the middle to the window, then get up on something, to climb up to the window, open the window and jump. Where were the nurses? Was anybody there? Where were the nurses?” she questioned.

The family is demanding answers. They believe that if Marisa was restrained or sedated as requested, she would have still been alive.

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• GPHC, Marisa Eastman, negligence, Pregnant woman, suicide

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