Family in disbelief: third relative almost died in septic tank tragedy

By Kurt Campbell

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Hours after a Hyde Park, Timehri, East Bank Demerara couple perished while trapped inside a septic tank, the mourning family is still in disbelief. The frantic rush to save them in the uncertain moment could have resulted in the death of a third person.

Dead are 51-year-old Ramlall Madhoo and 42-year-old Camille Dwarka.

It was just after 20:00hrs on Thursday when the wife’s screams for help were heard by her niece Anita Joseph who was at the time sitting a few feet away.

Joseph had just spoken to Camille who was looking for her potty in the dark but within seconds, the woman slipped into the septic tank.

The family scrambled for help, calling on neighbours for assistance, but her husband would waste no time in jumping into the deep reservoir of faeces to save her.

“I run and after I see she I start to holler… I holler fuh she husband but by the time she husband fuh reach outside she already fall flat on she face.

“She husband run out and jump in she could a raise she face up but while he was trying fuh save she, he go down lil and drink up the water and vomit,” the young woman related.

Joseph said after the husband’s efforts failed and he became tired, a third relative jumped in to assist. The two men would now become trapped with the lifeless body of the woman while they await further help.

Joseph said the police arrived about an hour later and along with undertakers from a funeral parlour they rescued the two men but the husband, Ramlall Madhoo, was pronounced dead minutes after being brought up from the septic tank.

They would spend the next three to four hours cutting concrete to get the woman’s body out.

“Me mother brother jump in fuh tek he [the husband] out after he start vomit but he start going too. They barely snatch he or it could a been possibly three,” she said.

“…then they bring a ladder and tie he [the husband’s] hand and tek he out too but he been already gone… she they had to cut the tank top and nuff body had to go and get she out.”

The bodies are lying at the Memorial Funeral Home awaiting a post mortem examination which is expected on Monday.

But as Joseph related, the family is still in disbelief.

“The hole that she fall in was a very small hole so everybody saying is impossible fuh she fit in deh… so I don’t know how this end up happening… like she just fall flush in,” Joseph told the News Room.

A hard-working, caring and helpful couple they were, as family members remembered them.

“Nobody in this village could say they get a problem with she, nobody.”