Tonight one man is dead and another critical after they reportedly engaged in 6 to 10 days of drinking.
But is it alcohol poisoning or actual poisoning?
That's what Cherisse Halsall attempted to find out today when she headed West to St. Margaret's village for a first-hand account of public drinking that ended in tragedy.
It was a quiet even commonplace evening in St. Margaret's village as captured by the surveillance cameras at villager grocer PING AN LI. But the calm didn't last, and pretty soon that very same surveillance camera captured a strange occurrence. An eyewitness who preferred to remain off-camera told us what happened:
Eyewitness
"I was beside my gate when I saw that the man didn't want to get up even though they were lifting him up so I came, I put on my mask and came to see what was happening but when I got there the man was foaming up a lot so I told some of the boys to please pick him up and put him to sit down so that he could breathe because he couldn't breathe. So they managed to help me and they put him right there and they started to clean him and give him water but he couldn't drink the water because when you pour the water would come out."
"With the other two they were already gone when I came and the other one he went home running, the one in white but the next one the car took him. I was only interested in this one here because I've known him a long time that's why I was interested in this one here."
"Then his boss man came running and asked what happened, we told him he's sick so he said he would take him to the hospital so he went to get his vehicle and he came back and he took him."
"He was still alive so three-man and a girl put him in the car and they left but when they got to the hospital they said 10 minutes after that he was dead."
We got a similar account this morning from ACP Joseph Myvette but he says that it may not be as simple as excessive drinking.
Joseph Myvette, ACP- Head N.C.I.B
"That person who had passed away is one Augustine Rivas 59 years and the other two persons are Marlon Sajet 27 and Manuel Gonzalez 64 years. What the police know so far is these persons are residents of St. Margaret's village on the Hummingbird Highway and that they were at an open lot outside of an establishment and may have ingested some liquid which caused them to be foaming, investigators did visit the scene last night and are back on the scene this morning to conduct further investigations into this matter."
"What we were also told is that these persons have been drinking for the last 6 days consecutively in that area. So we are trying to determine whether or not whatever it is that was ingested was ingested accidentally or otherwise."
"Mr. Sajet was treated and released, he is the younger of them he is 27 years old while Mr. Gonzalez is at the KHMH in a critical condition."
And while it was reported that police took over two and a half hours to arrive on the scene ACP Myvette says that if that's the case there is an explanation.
Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir there were reports that police took an extensively long time to get there?"
Joseph Myvette, ACP- Head N.C.I.B
"I do not know that that is the case, what happens in these cases, the scenes of crime officers are usually as well go so that a team can be processed and I am aware that a police station is in St. Margret village and officers were stationed there so I do not know that that was the case."
Our eyewitness says that the officer stationed in the village did his best but that without a car there wasn't much that he could do.
Eyewitness
"The police came because they called him o he came on his cycle but he didn't have a vehicle, he's on cycle so he can't help but it's good that he came to check and see what was happening and then he bought water and he gave it to us so that we could give it to the man. He was the one that bought the water to help the man."
Police are awaiting a toxicology report to confirm Augustine Rivas's cause of death. Again, Manuel Gonzalez remains at the KHMH in a critical condition.
