Drowning victim hailed a hero

Newsday spoke to Seegobin’s sister-in-law Dinah Ramcharan, who recalled the incident. “We got to the pools at the waterfall after a 20-minute hike through the Matura forest. When we settled down, everyone was just having a good time and bathing in the shallow part of the pool.

“When we were getting dressed and packing up to leave, David took his son Simeon and my son, Daniel for a final dip. They went swimming in one of the deeper pools and it was here currents forced them further downwards.

They started splashing around in the water trying to get to the edge of the pool.” Ramcharan said Seegobin pushed the boys onto the riverbank before he slipped beneath the water and out of sight.

Ramcharan said that she called on members of the motorcycle club to go into the water and try and rescue Seegobin. “I kept pushing them to go into the water but only two of them did. We waited for about half an hour for him (David) to come back out but he never did.

Eventually the other guys said we had a long walk back to the hiking trail and we could call the authorities from there.” Ramcharan explained that the group notified the police who visited the scene and were accompanied by divers from the TT Coast Guard. The team later recovered Seegobin’s body after a brief search was carried out. Ramcharan said both Simeon and Daniel are struggling to come to terms with Seegobin’s death and were yesterday in a state of shock.

She is calling on the Tourism Development Company (TDC) and the Ministry of Tourism to take a more proactive approach in securing these popular pools by providing life guards or signs warning bathers of the danger of underwater currents in the deeper, larger pools.

“It was only after one of the divers surfaced that they told me the pool was more than 16 feet deep.

We had no idea that was the depth that we were swimming in. I implore the relevant agencies to take action before other families suffer as we are suffering now.” Seegobin, worked as a postal worker for the Trinidad and Tobago Postal Service (TT Post) for 19 years, is survived by his son Simeon Seegobin, 18, and daughter Rachel Seegobin, 20.