Toddler burns to death at grandparents’ Mon Repos home

Feb 01, 2019 News

Twenty-month-old Mahin Rampersaud was burned to death yesterday in a mid-afternoon fire that tore through his grandparents’ Triumph, East Coast Demerara home.

Dead: Mahin Rampersaud

His mother, Mala Rampersaud, told Kaieteur News that she was at work, in Georgetown, when she got the call from her sister who lives in Berbice that her parents’ Triumph house was on fire. The fire reportedly started at about 2:00pm, and lasted for over an hour.

The blaze tearing through the building

Kaieteur News understands that the toddler was left to sleep in an upstairs bedroom of the two-storey home, while the grandparents were downstairs. When the child’s grandmother started to smell smoke, all signs indicated that the fire was coming from the room in which the boy was left to sleep. Relatives said that when they realised there was a fire in the home, the flames were already too much to pass through. When they attempted to rescue the baby, they said that the fire “pushed” them back.
The fire killed the toddler and ripped through most of the house, leaving only a section of its frame and bare concrete. Rampersaud said that the damage was extreme and that there was no way to know how much was lost. She only saw a small pile of her toddler’s remains being carried away, to be delivered to a funeral parlour.
The origin of the fire remains unknown.