The body of a helpless man was Thursday April 19, 2012 in Yaounde found being swept downstream in River Mfoundi at about 7 am. It was discovered near the pedestrian bridges over the railway line and Mfoundi River Canal behind the Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation, SOPECAM and a local brewery.
Passers-by rushing to school and work - including Cameroon Tribune’s reporter – watched helplessly as the body was carried away by the relatively strong current of the dirty water, following heavy rains on Wednesday night in the city. The man, who appeared not to be dead yet, is said to have been a mental patient.
A traumatized eye witness met on the spot said he was rushing to take his child to school when the mad man bypassed him and was walking toward the Mvog Atangana Mballa Bridge along the walls of the canal. A few minutes later, he recognized the body of the mad man floating in the river.
It is thought that the mentally deranged man might have jumped into River Mfoundi, given that the walls of the newly constructed canal on its banks are about one and half metres high. Thus, it was not possible for him to have slipped into the river as the road behind each canal wall on either side of the river is tarred. And given the mental state of the man, apparently in his thirties, there are little chances that he survived the ordeal. The body was probably washed off on the banks of the river later after the end of the canal behind the SCDP fuel depot at Mvan.
