Adriana Younge was an eleven-year-old Guyanese girl who lived with her parents, Subrian Younge and Amecia Simon, and siblings Gabriella and Syed Youngee, at Parika, a Village on the East Bank of Guyana’s Essequibo River, in Administrative Region 3.
On April 23, 2025, Adriana and several other cousins went on an Easter outing to the pool at Double Day Hotel at Tuschen Village, with her grandmother, Carol Xavier. Minutes after the children entered the pool, Adriana went missing. An alarm was raised, and the Guyana Police Force was called. The Police falsely advised the parents that they had footage of Adriana leaving the hotel with a man and that they should go home.
The family refused to leave and stayed at the entrance of the hotel all through the night until the following day. They were assisted by community members and public spirited citizens who were alerted of the issue by Facebook live streams and joined to support the search for Adriana. Consequently, Police and hotel
management blocked the family from thoroughly searching the building. Following an afternoon and night of high drama, Adriana’s dead body was inexplicably found floating vertically in the Hotel’s pool on the morning of April 24, 2025. Notable, the small hotel pool with a maximum depth of 8 ft was searched on a number of occasions by family members; a swimming instructor with the help of other persons swimming at the time, and the police. Adriana
was not in the pool! To grasp the gravity of this astounding development one must first understand the history of the Double Day Hotel. The hotel is owned by Bhojnarine Bhola and his wife, Maya Sukhraj. Their son
Bhojnarine Bhola, 37, is the manager. In November 2012, the son and his driver, Leyland Johnson, were charged with the murder of Sideek Juman, a mechanic who was similarly found dead in the hotel’s swimming pool, just like Adriana Youngee.
On August 2, 2017, Bhola and Liverpool beat the murder charges and were acquitted by Magistrate Rushell Liverpool for a lack of evidence. The hotel owners are extremely wealthy people with connections to the PPP government. They are also financiers of the ruling PPP.
It is against this backdrop that Adriana went missing. Aware of the previous murder incident, her family and public-spirited citizens were relentless in finding her, insisting that they be allowed to search the entire premises of the hotel. However, they were denied by the hotel management and the Police. Several videos showed hotel staff callously laughing as the family desperately searched for Adriana.
There has never been a greater example of the Guyana government and Police Force (GPF) failures and being contemptuous of its citizens, than Guyana’s PPP regime’s abominable mismanagement and deliberate bungling of Adriana’s murder. Moreover, the alleged lengths to which the Guyana Police Force and government officials have
gone to cover up this matter, conceal evidence and protect the owners of the Double Day Hotel at which Adriana’s murder took place, is abhorrent. Additionally, their blatant defiance of Adriana Younge’s family, and a super majority of the Guyanese people’s demand to ensure justice is served have left Guyanese in shock.
ENABLING HER KILLERS:
The Guyana Police Force (GPF) abjectly failed to protect little eleven-year-old Adriana Younge from her killers. Police Region 3 Commander, Khalid Mandall, allegedly a friend of the hotel owners, sent his lawmen to guard the hotel to prevent worried family members and concerned community members from entering to search for the missing child.
While this Police intransigence was happening outside, the child was actively facing death inside the hotel, allegedly aided and abetted by the Police. It must be noted that the US State Department in its Annual International Narcotics Control Reports, has consistently lamented the corruption in the Guyana Police Force. (See page 231 of the 2025 Report).
Adriana, a swimmer from the river village of Parika, went missing within fifteen minutes of her entering the swimming pool. The family raised an alarm when she was discovered missing, then called Police. The Police did nothing other than send two ranks to the hotel. The two cops, together with the family, performed a cursory search but came up empty-handed. Witnesses and family members said they made several searches of the pool, which contained clear water, while the Police officers who responded initially searched as well. Adriana was not in
the pool. This fact was fully established.
Hotel management refused to allow family members to do a comprehensive search of the hotel. Instead, the owner influenced the Police to send reinforcement to safeguard the property. Police officers guarded the Double Day Hotel and blocked family member’s further entry as Adriana was potentially being murdered inside. “Adriana is not at the hotel, go home.” This is the lie management and Police told the family and concerned members of the community who had gathered outside the hotel, as night set in. No one moved.
To lure the family and the large crowd away from the hotel, the Police fabricated a lie that Police had footage of Adriana leaving in a red and black car bearing license plate PSS 4684. Police then issued a knowingly false wanted bulletin for the vehicle, causing the driver to be unjustly arrested and detained for twelve hours. Hotel management joined the web of deceit. They lied that the facility’s security surveillance camera system was not working. It was obviously a full-fledged conspiracy by the hotel owners and the Police to cover-up Adriana’s killing. Family members immediately canvased nearby homes with security cameras. They along with a Police rank saw surveillance video footage of Adriana entering the hotel but never leaving. This confirmed that she never left the hotel.
The family and hundreds of neighbors stayed outside the hotel all night. While the Police kept urging them to leave. At one point the police attempted to order them to leave. However, they refused.
Ms. Laura Batson, a family friend, streamed the ordeal as it unfolded that afternoon and into the night. Thousands of people from all over the world watched live. Thanks to her alertness and live commentary, the world got an insight into the evil that beset this family on that wretched April night.
Adriana Younge’s parents, grandmother, other family members and hundreds of concerned community residents stood guard at the hotel all night, with Police officers from the Guyana Police Force (GPF) Regional Division 3, guarding the hotel to ensure none of them entered to search for Adriana.
BODY THROWN IN POOL AND THE POLICE COVERUP:
The Police claimed they searched the hotel and the pool thoroughly. The family confirmed that several officers and family representatives searched the hotel but were not allowed to examine all rooms. The family also confirmed that during the afternoon and night of April 23, 2025, after she went missing, the pool, which had clear water, was searched at least six times. A social media commentator by the name of Guyanese Critic did a live streaming of the pool showing that a dead body was not in the pool.
The following day, April 24, 2025, an angry large crowd gathered outside the hotel demanding that the hotel management deliver Adriana to her parents. Police reinforcement also arrived and protected the hotel.
At around 10:30 AM on Thursday, April 24, angry residents of the community pushed past the Police line and rushed into the hotel. As this pandemonium erupted, someone in the hotel allegedly threw Adriana’s dead body into the pool to make it appear that she drowned in the pool.
At this point, the Police, without summoning crime scene investigators to process the crime scene, callously placed Adriana’s body into a Police pick-up truck and whisked her off to the nearby Leonora Hospital where it remained for a few hours under the supervision of the hospital personnel and law enforcement officers. According to Police, the body was sealed and then sent to Ezekiel’s Funeral Home at Vreed en Hoop.
Public backlash was swift. Within minutes the hotel went up in flames. Video evidence surfaced suggesting that the hotel was set ablaze by hotel staff with the help of plain clothes police officers.
The home of the hotel owner, located a few streets away, was also set ablaze. The press later reported the owner’s family allegedly fled to the US. Police Divisional Commander Khalid Mandall then faced demands for his removal for lying to
Adriana’s parents and the nation that Adriana left the hotel. The GPF leadership and the government initially refused to remove Mandall, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, from the Division. Mandall’s presence as Commander fueled intense backlash and protests erupted outside his office at the Leonora Police on April 25, 2025.
PROTESTS:
Protesters blocked the main West Demerara Highway and burned tires and other debris. This disruption brought traffic to and from the Capital City, Georgetown, to a complete halt. Riot Police opened fire on protesters. Deputy Commissioner of Police Simon McBean, who is well respected by citizens of the country, was dispatched from Georgetown to help manage the situation on the West Coast.
The following day, April 26, 2025, the government reluctantly announced that Mandall had been merely transferred to Regional Division 4B, the Division across the Demerara River on the East Bank Demerara. The announcement triggered more outrage and protests, and the government was forced to place Mandall on administrative leave.
Adriana’s murder sparked protests countrywide as angry citizens accused the police of colluding with hotel owners to cover up Adriana’s killing. Outrage, as well as mistrust in the Police and government was exacerbated by the government’s decision to shoot the protesters.
This followed the Police shooting to death of Keon Fogenay on April 9, 2025, an innocent bystander at a protest in Guyana’s second largest town, Linden, just two weeks prior. That protest was precipitated by the Police murder of Renaldo Peters on April 8, 2025, then lying in a statement about the circumstances of the shooting.
AUTOPSY:
After mounting public pressure, the government allowed three international pathologists to conduct the autopsy on Adriana’s body on April 28, 2025. They were Dr Glenn A. Rudner from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Dr Shubhakar Karra Paul, the government-appointed international pathologist from Barbados, and Dr Gary L. Collins, Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Delaware.
During the autopsy which was conducted at the morgue at the main Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), in Georgetown, there was intense standoff between riot Police and protesters, several of whom were shot by Police for protesting and blocking the streets. The aggressive Police posture triggered further anger in the society and the protests grew larger and spread throughout the country.
At the conclusion of the almost five-hour autopsy, after the pathologists briefed the family, Adriana’s dad, Subrian Younge, told reporters that the pathologists said their autopsy found that the cause of death was drowning. Mr. Younge immediately rejected the finding.
The doctors made it clear that the preliminary autopsy report sanctions the cause of death but not the manner of death, and that the Police investigation must determine the way Adriana died. After it was announced that the autopsy found that Adriana’s death was caused by drowning, the people nationwide rejected the results. Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali then caused further anger when he rushed out with a live televised but erroneous statement claiming that pathologists found that Adriana did not die from forcible drowning or any other form of killing.
UNREST AND POLICE WILD SHOOTING OF PROTESTERS:
Unrest and rioting erupted along the entire coastal plain of Guyana, forcing businesses to close. At the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, flights were diverted to Trinidad and Tobago. The government later unjustly charged hundreds of those seen in protesters with terrorism. Tianna Lewis-King, a nursing assistant with at Guyana’s Ministry of Health, and young mother of two, was also unjustly charged with terrorism for fabricating a fantastic lie that she witnessed the autopsy. Legal experts uniformly condemned the terrorism charges as an appallingly unconstitutional and autocratic maneuver that is intended to intimidate the population from further protests for justice for Adriana.
Adriana Younge’s new family Attorney Dr. Dexter Todd, who replaced Attorney at Law Darren Wade, echoed the longstanding demands of the family and further demanded that the government invite the FBI, Scotland Yard or Royal Canadian Mounted Police to lead the investigation.
The government, however, refused. Instead, they merely requested retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Detective investigator, Leonard McCoshen, to come to Guyana to review evidence the Guyana Police Force allegedly collected so far. Mc Mcoshen left Guyana after spending a few days and publicly admitting that he had no prior experience in such investigations.
SECOND AUTOPSY:
Adriana’s body has not been laid to rest yet, as her family continues to demand answers. The government-backed medical board has blocked one other independent overseas pathologist from examining the body further.
As the anxious country awaits a resolution of this case, the family’s Attorney, Dr. Dexter Todd, on May 20, 2025, announced that Adriana’s body will be flown to the United States for a second autopsy, a first in Guyana’s history.
SERIOUS QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE ANSWERED BY ANY POLICE INVESTIGATION:
Serious questions remain unanswered which must be the basis for a Police murder investigation: Why was Adriana removed from the pool if not with ill intent and by who? Where in the hotel was she taken so that her family could not find her during several searches? She was obviously not in the pool, which was thoroughly searched after she went missing, so where was she? What happened to her, what led to her death and who killed her? How did her body get back into the pool, who placed it there? Who were the people who tampered with the crime scene, covered up evidence, obstructed justice and were accessories to this crime?
Why was the Police complicit with this murder? Who in the Guyana Police Force authorized the force to lie to Adriana’s family and the nation? How did the lie that the first autopsy on Adriana’s body discovered that “Adriana
did not die from intentional drowning or any other form of killing,” find its way into President Ali’s speech, which contributed to countrywide unrest? If the Police investigation is not mandated to answer these and other questions that that investigation is fraudulent.
RECOGNITION BY THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS:
Adriana’s murder has dominated the news cycle in almost every country and society in the Western Hemisphere and further afield. The story of her gruesome death and ghastly discovery in the pool pervades Guyanese and Caribbean American communities in the United States as Guyanese nationals and others mourn Adriana’s heinous death, and call for justice in vigils, neighborhood gatherings and halls of power.
Consequently, on June 1, 2025, Adriana Younge’s name will become permanently etched in the annals of the United States Congress. Members of Congress will recognize Adriana Younge’s memory and legacy with a Proclamation in her honor sponsored by Democratic Leader of the United States House of Representative, Hon. Hakeem Jeffries.
Guyanese Diaspora Organizations of the USA (GDAUSA)
Washington DC
May 21, 2025
