A 7-year old primary school pupil, simply identified to www.calitown.com as Achilles, yesterday in Diamond Hill, Calabar, CRS, fell into a soak away and died, leaving several residents of the area shell shocked.
Informants in Diamond Hill say the only child of a single mother had gone to church earlier but came back home when the programme he went for in church didn’t hold. Child that he is, he simply went to the back of the house where the soak away is to play when tragedy struck.
We further gathered that his grandmother who was at home simply felt the deceased was away playing with other neighbourhood kids, when she didn’t immediately see him after he came back from church.
When the deceased mother got back home a little later, she was informed that the young boy left fruit juice for her, his dotting mother. Perhaps to show gratitude, she repeatedly called out his name but there was no response, prompting her to go in search of him. All hell was let loose when she discovered, at the back of the house, a gaping hole in the soak away and her son’s floating pair of slippers.
A quick search and rescue operation located and recovered the stiff body of the deceased as wailing and shocked neighbours gathered. He was immediately taken to the Navy Reference Hospital, Calabar and Aruba Clinic, Calabar, where the deceased was medically declared dead on arrival.