By Stabroek staff | September 23, 2010
After Ivor Gomes’ body was exhumed on Monday it was discovered that he suffered blunt trauma to the back of the head and also from cirrhosis.
Last Wednesday Ivor, 41, was buried by police before he could be identified. His sister, Nicola Gomes, has since said that sloppy work by both the police and the New Amsterdam hospital has caused her family additional grief.
“We have had a discussion about taking legal action against both the police and the hospital,” she said.
Ivor, of Asylum Street, New Amsterdam was last seen two Sundays ago when his stepbrother dropped him off at a funeral in Port Mourant. The man was never heard from again and his relatives learnt of his death after reading an article in another daily newspaper.
Her brother’s body, Nicola said she’d learnt from the Berbice Crime Chief, was in Albion. A businessman reportedly told police that he had seen her brother staggering shortly before he collapsed on a dam in that area. Ivor’s body was subsequently picked up and taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital Mortuary.
The exhumation, Nicola said, was done by Government Pathologist Nehaul Singh. The doctor, according to her, explained that the blunt trauma to the back of her brother’s head could have been caused when he fell.
“We are not saying that we believe that nothing happened to my brother… the doctor is saying that he was hit to the back of the head when he fell but if not for the sloppy work by the police then a post mortem would’ve been done on my brother at the appropriate time,” Nicola said.
Her family, Nicola stressed, is not accepting anything just yet and intends to speak with police at Albion. The woman also stated that they intend to ask police which businessman saw Ivor staggering just before he fell.
It has since been confirmed, Nicola said, that Ivor’s body was taken to the New Amsterdam hospital morgue at about 2.30 pm two Sundays ago. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hospital Leslie Cadogan, the woman said, after checking records informed her that her brother was taken to the hospital morgue by a hearse on that day. However, when Cadogan spoke with this newspaper last week he had said that the body was taken there last Tuesday.
The body, Nicola further said, was not accompanied by a police officer. She was also told this by the CEO, she said, who informed her that he’d learnt this after questioning the porter who was on duty when Ivor’s body was taken in.
Cadogan had told Stabroek News that the man’s body was taken to the morgue in a state of decomposition on Tuesday afternoon and the following morning they contacted police to inform them that it had to be moved since the morgue did not have the facilities to store it.
However, after checking the hospital records Cadogan later told Ivor’s relatives that the man’s body was taken to the morgue on Sunday and not Tuesday. Several efforts made to contact the hospital CEO for a comment yesterday were futile. The man remained unreachable up to late last night.
“So if what Cadogan now says that my brother’s body was taken to the hospital morgue on Sunday then his body was not in a state of decomposition and it had to be that the morgue was not working properly that is why my brother body started to decompose,” Nicola said.
She further pointed out that although police had taken a picture of her brother’s dead body since Sunday they did not release it to the media until Wednesday. Had her brother’s picture been published the day after he was found, Nicola stated, then relatives would have been able to identify him and there would’ve been no need for his body to remain in the morgue for several days or be buried without the knowledge of relatives.
This is not the first time that relatives have complained about the morgue at the New Amsterdam hospital.
Earlier this month the New Amsterdam hospital morgue also refused to take the badly decomposed bodies of fisherman, Teshwar Madramootoo, 39, of Kilcoy Squatting Area, Corentyne and remigrant Elsie Nieuenkirk of New Winkle Road, New Amsterdam. Cadogan had admitted last week Thursday that there was a problem with the morgue’s storage system on that day, but said this was immediately rectified. However, he had stressed that there was no storage problem when Ivor’s body was taken in.