EDITORIAL: A Daughter Lost, A Nation Betrayed

In a country already scarred by broken promises and corruption, the murder of 11-year-old Adrianna Younge revealed something even more horrifying; a system so rotten, so complicit, that it left a grieving family alone to fight for justice.

On what should have been an innocent family outing to the Double Day Hotel in Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo, Adrianna disappeared, swallowed by a system that treated her life as disposable.

Her family knew something was wrong. From the very first moment Adrianna was missing, her father Subrian and her mother Amecia pleaded with the police. They searched frantically. They stayed. They refused to leave. Their gut told them their baby was still inside that hotel. But the police didn’t listen.

Instead, they issued vague warrants, demanded signatures without details, fabricated stories about Adrianna leaving the premises in a car, stories now proven to be false.  They treated Adrianna like a runaway. Like so many other young girls who had gone missing before her and whose disappearances were callously ignored.

When the family refused to leave, when they insisted on the truth, when the villagers gathered in protest, the truth emerged, but only after 20 agonizing hours.

It was not the police who found Adrianna. It was her family. It was her community. It was the people who loved her enough to fight for her.

Her small, lifeless body was found floating in the very hotel pool the police had “searched” multiple times.
Bruised. Beaten. Cotton wool allegedly stuffed into her nose, in a clear attempt to hide the cause of death.
This was no accident. This was murder and it happened under the watch of a government and a police force that had long abandoned their duty to protect.

The Guyana Police Force, now internationally known for corruption, extrajudicial killings, cover-ups, rape, and the suppression of political opponents, failed Adrianna, just as they have failed so many others.
This same police force, paralyzed by political interference, hand-picked by a government more interested in loyalty than justice, stood by and did nothing as a child was left to die.

They didn’t treat Adrianna as a daughter of Guyana. They treated her as an inconvenience. They didn’t search for the truth. They searched for a cover-up. And when the villagers; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, saw that justice would not come from the government, they rose up and widespread protests began.

However it is alleged that the guilty parties destroyed the Double Day Hotel to hide their evil, and even attempted to blame the vigilant citizens.  The hotel by the way, was a place rumored to have been a den of exploitation for years, shielded by political protection, shielded by police silence.

The people were not sad to see this den of iniquity torn down, brick by brick, flame by flame.
Because when a nation’s institutions collapse, only the people’s rage remains.

Amecia Simon, Adrianna’s mother, stood outside that building that night, heartbroken and furious, remembering the moment a police commander had told her to “go home and sleep.”
While her daughter lay lifeless inside.  “We trusted them to help us. Instead, they helped cover up her death,” she said, her voice breaking with grief.

The lies didn’t stop.  The police released “inaccurate” statements. The President, the same one who paralyzed the Police Service Commission and hand-picked police leadership for political loyalty, promised a full investigation, but only after the nation’s anger made it impossible to stay silent.

The truth is plain, the PPP government, by undermining police independence, created a force that protects political allies and hotel owners over the lives of children.  The Guyana Police Force, corrupted and complicit, enabled Adrianna’s death by failing to act, failing to investigate, and failing to care.  The political system, by valuing loyalty and money over competence and justice, allowed this tragedy to happen.

Adrianna Younge’s death was not an isolated tragedy. It was a symptom of a sick system. A system where poor, hardworking families can do everything right, raise their children with love, protect them with everything they have, and still lose them to the greed and corruption that rots the soul of a nation.

Adrianna’s  family wasn’t rich. They weren’t powerful. But they were decent. They were hard-working.
They were the heart and soul of Guyana. A family trying to build a future for their children, a future stolen from them by a country that failed to protect its own.

Adrianna’s blood cries out for justice. Her family’s grief cries out for justice. The people of Guyana cry out for a new beginning; one where no child is treated as disposable, no family is left to mourn alone, and no corrupt institution stands unpunished.  Until then, Adrianna’s death stands as a permanent indictment of those who allowed it to happen.

We must never forget Adrianna Younge.  We must never forget who betrayed her.