MORANT BAY, St Thomas — Relatives of a man who reportedly jumped to his death at Princess Margaret Hospital are questioning whether the medical facility did enough to protect him, considering that he had been admitted there after drinking a poisonous substance.

Surrano Warren, 61, drank Gramoxone, a herbicide, in the parking lot at the hospital on Sunday. He was then placed on the three-storey facility’s top floor, from which he reportedly leaped hours before dawn Monday.

“I have cried many times,” said Floyd Warren, son of the deceased businessman who operated a grocery shop in his community of Georgia, located near Trinityville.

He questioned whether his father had been handcuffed or otherwise restrained while at the hospital, following his initial suicide attempt.

“The hospital didn’t do enough to protect my father because they should have a watch over him through the night,” he said. “It is just surprising.”

Asked if his father had shown any clear sign of depression prior to Sunday, Floyd Warren responded: “No. Not at all.”

The two, along with the widow of the late Warren, lived together at Georgia district. Their household was filled with laughter, the younger Warren said, adding that he and his dad often matched skills in games of dominoes.

“My father was not a man you hear in any fight or quarrel with anybody,” said the son.

“He was a humble man, cool, jovial and always giving jokes. Him also sell and buy goods.”

Floyd Warren told the Jamaica Observer that his last happy moment with his father had been Sunday morning, when he asked him to pump his motor vehicle tyre.

“I pump up the tyre because mi figure seh him going nearby to his daughter,” the son said.

He recalls his father eventually driving out of the yard. He too left shortly afterwards.

Warren said he was surprised when he later got a phone call from his sister, informing him that their father was not feeling well.

He telephoned his father, who reportedly told him that he was at the Seaforth housing scheme in St Thomas.

Floyd, a motorcyclist, rushed to Seaforth, but his dad was nowhere in sight.

He telephoned him again to ascertain his whereabouts. That’s when his father told him he was at Princess Margaret Hospital.

“Him also tell mi nuh bother come [to the hospital] because him already drink the substance and when mi reach I will find his dead body,” the son recounted.

If the father’s comments were intended to slow down Floyd, they actually had the opposite effect. He went to the hospital in a frantic rush and was stunned by what he saw.

“Mi find mi father in the grass lay down in the parking lot [at the hospital]. Same time mi rush to the porter and bring him goh tek mi father up,” Floyd Warren told the Observer.

A bottle of Gramoxone reportedly was found on the ground beside the father of eight.

His son theorised that he acquired the herbicide after leaving home Sunday morning.

In the meantime, Lora Danvers-Carter, a sister of the deceased, described the entire situation as heart-rending.

“I don’t know what really come into my brother for him to do something like that; it is really heart-rending. The things that people are talking; it is terrible,” she told the Observer. “My brother was a helpful person; he was very jovial. You don’t see him without him smiling or laughing. He wasn’t a dull person at no time.”

She stated that the only major problem she knew her brother was facing is in relation to a diabetes diagnosis about a year ago. “He was complaining of a burning in his feet,” the sister disclosed.

She was shocked when she heard that the elder Warren had attempted suicide, but she mustered the strength to visit him at hospital.

“When I was at the hospital Sunday after he took the Gramoxone, him couldn’t do anything for himself. His eyes didn’t open; you could not get a word from him; he was helpless,” Danvers-Carter noted.

She wonders if her brother could have revived so speedily to jump from the hospital’s third floor. “Why they didn’t restrain him? That needs to be answered. If somebody comes on the hospital compound and drink Gramoxone, this person is supposed to be going through a trauma, and so they should have had him under suicide watch… Something not adding up; I can’t understand it,” Danvers-Carter said.

Asked whether the late Warren had been placed on suicide watch, chief executive officer at the hospital Melecia Linton declined to say.

“I would not be able to give you that information at this time,” she said. “We have commenced our investigation and the same is ongoing to ascertain the facts before we can say what went wrong, if anything at all went wrong.”

The tragedy on Monday brings back memories of another incident in which a 41-year-old man, Welton Thomas, leapt to his death also from the third floor of Princess Margaret Hospital in November 2020.

Asked if the medical facility is concerned that a second case of the sort has happened within less than two years, Linton replied: “Of course it must be concerning. That is two lives lost and we are in this business to save lives. That is why we are treating this [case] with the utmost priority that it deserves.”

Linton added that, following the November 2020 incident, measures had been put in place at the hospital to prevent a recurrence.

“Steps were taken. I would not be able to disclose those at this time but I know that we would have done our assessment, we would have looked at the gaps,” she said. “Unfortunately, we find ourselves at the same place, and so we are doing a thorough investigation so we can see if there remain weaknesses in the system that we need to address,” declared Linton.