MOMENTS after concluding an animated conversation with her father and starting to watch video cartoons, 15-year-old Ronita Erskine, popularly known as “Pinky”, suddenly took ill at her West Ruimveldt home, and died before receiving medical attention.
The Gifted Hands Learning Centre student was the daughter of Mr and Mrs. Godfrey Erskine of 113 West Ruimveldt, Georgetown. Mrs. Erskine is an employee of the Guyana Chronicle.
Pinky’s parents were in mourning yesterday even as they struggled to find reasons for their only child’s sudden death.
A devastated Mr. Erskine recounted the moments before his daughter collapsed while eating a meal early yesterday (Monday) morning. He said: “I was at home. Her mother had left for work, so myself and her were talking as I moved around the house; and everything seemed normal. Then I asked her if she was hungry and she said yes, and I dished out some pepperpot and gave her some bread to eat it with. Then I left her in the upstairs where the TV is and went downstairs to do some other tidying up,” he said.
Moments later, he said, he heard a loud thumping noise in the upper flat, and he rushed back upstairs to see what was happening.
He found the teenager tossing on the floor and apparently gasping for breath. He thought that she had choked on her food and tried to help her, but her condition began to deteriorate when she began to bleed through her nose and mouth; so he had no option but to rush her to the nearest hospital. The young girl was declared dead on arrival at the St Joseph Mercy Hospital.
The sad and mystified parents said it was the first time their daughter had taken ill. They said they are totally depending on the results of a post-mortem on Pinky’s body, scheduled for Friday, to furnish them with answers to her mysterious death.
