Dr. Dextor Todd, attorney for the Younge family, has stated that the death of 11-year-old Adriana Younge is far too complex for the investigation to have been completed within days, even though it was conducted by an expert, retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigator, Leonard McCoshan.
Younge’s body was discovered on April 23, 2025, in the swimming pool of the Double Day International Hotel.
The first autopsy confirmed that her death was consistent with drowning. The police said that no evidence of trauma, assault, or any other criminal activity was found. Those findings, the force said, supported McCoshan’s report, which concluded that there is “no evidence of foul play by persons named or unnamed during the investigation”.
The family subsequently transported the body to the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner’s Office and Morgue, GA, USA, where a second autopsy was conducted.
Dr. Todd, during an interview there with Guyanese Journalist, Travis Chase, aired several concerns regarding the findings. He said that McCoshan, when it met with Adriana’s father, Subrian Younge, told him that he read his statement. However, Younge responded that was impossible since he had given no such report to the police.
Dr. Todd said he found it “strange” that Subrian Younge, who leapt into the pool to retrieve his daughter’s body, had not given a statement. The lawyer further said that he was also surprised that the Canadian expert was able to wrap up the probe in a matter of days, given the complexity of the case.
He said that he advised the Canadian expert that there was need to assemble a team of other experts external to the Guyana Police Force to assist with reviewing the various aspects of the case.
“I expressed to the investigator why I believe, in my limited opinion, there is a need to have that, and he said that he was going to raise that with the Crime Chief and that he was going to raise that with whoever authority in relation to the recommendations.”
Dr. Todd said that the suggestion was made to McCoshan because the Guyana Police Force is “not competent”, and therefore, to rely solely on the force’s information would be insufficient.
“And I can tell you that in that short time, if he had to review the statements and of course, work done by the Guyana Police Force investigators in this matter, then I’m telling you – he has reviewed nothing, because they (police force) are not competent to do the investigation.
And clearly, he could not have walked through this investigation from start to ending in such a short time. The complexity of this investigation would not allow any person reviewing this matter in days to review statements,” Dr. Todd stated.
He added that first and foremost, the expert would have to get a Digital Forensic Expert to be able to bring together all those videos that were posted online of the events at the hotel to “recreate the crime scene”, since the location was destroyed by fire. That process could not have been done with the expert’s findings being disclosed within such a short time.
Speaking to the timing of the police force’s release of the results, Dr. Todd said that the family found it “strange” that the police would do so as soon as Adriana’s body arrived in the United States.
He went on to say, too, that the authorities were “insulting the intelligence” of the family when President, Dr Irfaan Ali declared that his government did all that it could have done to bring closure to the family.
“If they have exhausted all the science, then they should say that, but don’t say that ‘we have done all that we could do’, where there is more that can be done,” the lawyer said, citing that there were other processes that could have been exploited.
“I can tell you that they were not serious about this investigation. Clearly, they were not,” the lawyer declared.
