Almost a year has passed since the death of 11-year-old Adriana Younge, and nobody has been able to explain how or what happened. Nobody has been charged. Nobody has been held accountable. And according to the family’s lawyer, the investigation meant to find those answers cannot even clear half the questions that still hang over this case like a dark cloud.
Attorney Dr. Dexter Todd is no longer willing to stay quiet about it. Speaking on Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds, Todd laid bare the shocking state of the probe with barely concealed fury. He claimed that statements have still not all been collected and the Director of Public Prosecutions has not issued so much as a whisper that the matter is moving toward any kind of resolution.
“Up to this day, the police still are saying that the investigation is ongoing,” he said. “Up to two weeks ago, when we checked, they had not completed all their statements.” And from the office that ultimately decides whether charges will be laid, there has been nothing but silence. “To this day, nothing has been said; not even a report from the Director of Public Prosecutions to indicate that this matter is nearing an end.”
Dr. Todd explained physical evidence from the hotel pool, including tile samples that could have yielded critical forensic clues, was never taken. Unexplained marks found on Adriana’s body remain exactly that: unexplained, because investigators have been unable to connect them to anything physically examined at the scene.
“You have a situation where you have no type of conclusion in relation to certain marks seen on the body,” Todd stated, “because the pathologist is not able to relate that to certain things within the pool.” The damning summary of it all was delivered simply and directly: “The police’s investigation, up to now, could not cover or answer more than half of the questions.”
Making the situation even more alarming is the fact that the Guyana Police Force cannot seem to agree with itself on where things stand. In July 2025, the Force boldly declared its investigation complete and announced the case file had been forwarded to the DPP; a file that included findings from retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Leonard McCoshen, flown in by the government to lend international credibility to the probe.
“I am not going to write a full report and come to the conclusion of drowning if I don’t have all these questions answered,” Todd relayed — a stance that exposes just how much critical information remains missing. The family formally submitted a series of questions and requests for additional examinations to both the Commissioner of Police and the Crime Chief. Those queries, Todd confirmed, have gone unanswered.
Adriana was just 11 years old, a resident of Hyde Park, Parika, when she disappeared on April 23, 2025, during what should have been an ordinary family outing at the Double Day International Hotel and Bar in Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo. Her grandmother saw her swimming in the hotel pool at around 1pm. Shortly after, she was gone.
Searches were launched, including of the pool itself. And yet, nearly 20 hours later, her body was found in that very same pool, upright, in a discovery that shocked the nation and set off a wave of public outrage that has never fully subsided. A post-mortem conducted on April 28, 2025 by international pathologists returned a finding of drowning, but for a family confronted with the impossible circumstances of how and where their child was found, that conclusion only opened the door to more questions than it closed.
As the one-year mark bears down, Adriana Younge’s family finds themselves trapped in an unbearable reality, grieving a child whose death has never been fully explained, watching an investigation stumble in circles, and fighting to be heard by a system that has failed them at nearly every turn.
