Randy Bartlett was in the nick of time to stop his uncle Frank Thomas from fatally severing his wrist last year.
His timing was off yesterday and he found his uncle’s body hanging in the family shower after 8 a.m.
“I feel like I could’ve done more. If I knew what was his intentions I would’ve stopped him. But I guess the medication that he was taking run out, so he start to psyche out and thing. That is the problem,” Bartlett said regretfully.
After not hearing the 66-year-old for some time, Bartlett went in search of him and made the discovery he had already felt in his gut.
He said Thomas would normally come and “nag” him in the morning, but he was in the kitchen with his tablet catching up on some reruns of games and other things, when it dawned on him that his uncle was not around as usual, and he called him a few times.
Bartlett said he told his grandmother that he called for his uncle and didn’t hear him answer, and she figured he had left with his younger brother Michael Callender. A call to Callender shot down that theory, so Bartlett commenced a search.
“I look all over the house, I ain’t see Frank. I pass the bathroom, yuh know, and I ain’t look in ’cause he had the shower curtain pull. I just went in the toilet, look and come in the yard ’cause last year he tried to kill himself . . . . So I look all over the place and I thinking, then I said, ‘see me, lemme look in the bathroom’.
“But before I went I feel like my belly. I said I feel Frank in dey. I feel Frank kill heself. Usually when I holler for Frank, Frank does come out . . . . He never came out. When I look, I see Frank hanging from the shower top. He had on he clothes,” Bartlett recounted.
He said he took his grandmother away from the area to prevent her from seeing her son hanging. (YB)
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