RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The sud­den death of 18-year-old dancer Jed­da Be­har­ry has left her fam­i­ly dev­as­tat­ed and search­ing for an­swers, with rel­a­tives re­fus­ing to com­ment on the cir­cum­stances of her pass­ing un­til an au­top­sy is com­plet­ed.

An au­top­sy is sched­uled for to­mor­row to de­ter­mine the cause of Be­har­ry’s death.

Be­har­ry, a mem­ber of the Trinidad Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Dance Com­pa­ny, had flown the na­tion­al flag through dance, win­ning com­pe­ti­tions in In­di­an dance and rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try at re­gion­al events.

Her pas­sion for dance be­gan at an ear­ly age. Be­har­ry par­tic­i­pat­ed in Mas­tana Ba­har as a five-year-old and had been prepar­ing for an­oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty, with plans to trav­el to Italy.

The School of In­ter­na­tion­al Trav­el and Lan­guages (SITAL) stu­dent was al­so known for per­form­ing tra­di­tion­al Bol­ly­wood and clas­si­cal dance, in­cor­po­rat­ing con­tem­po­rary in­flu­ences in­to her rou­tines.

She had al­so been in­volved in teach­ing dance in Gas­par­il­lo, where she was well known with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

At the fam­i­ly’s Hap­py Hill, Gas­par­il­lo home yes­ter­day, a som­bre mood pre­vailed as rel­a­tives mourned her pass­ing. She was not ill, and her death had been un­ex­pect­ed.

Sev­er­al rel­a­tives ex­pressed hurt over com­ments be­ing made about Be­har­ry on so­cial me­dia but de­clined to dis­cuss the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

They said they did not want to jeop­ar­dise the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and would await the re­sults of the au­top­sy be­fore mak­ing any pub­lic state­ments.

Po­lice re­port­ed that Be­har­ry was at her boyfriend’s res­i­dence at Ben Lomond Vil­lage, Gas­par­il­lo, on Fri­day night when she re­port­ed­ly be­came ill.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, she sub­se­quent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing and com­plained of sud­den chest pains.

Emer­gency as­sis­tance was sought and CPR was at­tempt­ed be­fore she was tak­en to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she was pro­nounced dead.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal and lat­er went to the scene, where they in­ter­viewed sev­er­al peo­ple and gath­ered in­for­ma­tion.

The scene was processed by Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors, and po­lice said en­quiries are con­tin­u­ing.