For three hours Sita Phillip sat in a vehicle near the Ortoire River, waiting for her husband Larry Phillip to return from a fishing trip on Monday. Little did she know at the time that his lifeless body was floating out to sea.
Phillip and his friend Wayne Samaroo had hours before suffered a tragic demise when raging sea conditions capsized their pirogue, causing both of them to drown in the river.
It is believed that Phillip, 30, of Libertville Road, Rio Claro, was knocked unconscious when the 27-foot long pirogue struck him on the head. After searching for the whole night, his father-in-law Rajesh Seecharan found his body stuck between some rocks along the beach around 7 am yesterday.
Fidel Bayne, who witnessed the accident, said Samaroo, 52, of the Manzanilla/Mayaro Road, Ortoire Village, was wearing boots that became entangled in the net.
He said when villagers got him out of the water a short time later, they performed CPR but he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Mayaro District Health Facility.
According to Sita, 18, Phillip left her parent’s Cascadoux Trace home around 4.30 pm to retrieve a fishing net with pirogue owner Samaroo.
The T&T Guardian was told that Samaroo’s son Kowayne, 23, and nephew Rendell Jack, 23, were in the pirogue with the men when the incident that led to their deaths occurred.
The men were returning from sea with the net and catch when the pirogue stalled in the river mouth. When the engine stopped they pulled to the side, but with the rough waters the pirogue rocked violently. As the boat began to capsize the men jumped into the water, but only Kowayne and Jack were able to swim away alive.
“When he left to go, he told me to come back for him in an hour. They usually take an hour, so I went down there about 5.30 pm and I waited until 8.30 pm until I saw someone running and saying that the boat flipped over,” Sita recalled in speaking with the T&T Guardian yesterday.
It was only in September that Sita and Phillip celebrated their two-year anniversary and just six months ago they celebrated the birth of their daughter Sofia.
Sita said Phillip, a quality assurance/quality control officer, was laid off by British Gas last February but was expected to resume work in December. To continue to provide for his family, she said, he bought a pirogue recently and started to fish.
He would sometimes fish with Samaroo.
With his death, she said, she had now lost a loving, honest and hardworking husband.
Neither Kowayne nor Jack was at home yesterday, but Samaroo’s wife of 28 years, Lydia Samaroo, 53, said she was yet to learn what really happened.
She said Samaroo, a father of 15, was a boat maker, boat owner and fisherman who worked tirelessly every day. She said her family had planned to celebrate Divali and two weeks later go Christmas shopping.
“We were going to cook roti but we were not lighting any deyas. My husband really wasn’t a man to make plans. He lived today for tomorrow,” Lydia said.
However, she believed her son was wearing a life jacket as she said he could use only one of his feet.
She said because Kowayne walked with crutches and could not work, he loved going to sea and on other adventures with his father.