Top: Sandbags that the late Lamin Kamara offloaded from a boat before he died on last Wednesday.  The DayLight/Johnson Buchanan   

By Emmanuel Sherman

BUCHANAN, Grand Bassa County – A man died at the Port of Buchanan last Friday after a boat fell on top of him.

Lamin Kamara, 28, died while resting under a boat that was under repair after offloading several bags of zircon sand.

“Some people say he fell to sleep. Other people say it was the swells of the sea towards the port, while another group of people says he slipped and the boat felled on him,” said Francis Doegbee, a cousin of the deceased.

Doegbee said an Ivorian businessman had hired Kamara in Sinoe, where he lived with his wife and two children.

“He was working with Oliver Gboyoh who owns a lot of boats that usually transport goods to Buchanan, from Maryland, Sinoe and also bring black sand from there for some Chinese group of companies,” Doegbee said.

Kamara had traveled from Sinoe to offload a huge consignment of zircon sand locals call black sand. Jatoken, a company, mines the mineral used in the ceramics and electronics industries worldwide. He was pictured offloading the mineral into 25-kilogram bags minutes before his fatal accident.

Efforts to contact Gboyoh, the boatowner, proved unsuccessful. Our reporter called his phone but was not on.

Kamara was buried on Saturday in line with Islamic traditions.