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Minister St Ange expresses sadness over Mauritian guest’s death |20 August 2014

The Minister for Tourism and Culture Alain St Ange has declared as very sad the death of a Mauritian guest who was in the country recently.

The body of Harmon Chellen, Training Centre Manager at the Mauritius Institute of Training and Development and the Ecole Hoteliere Sir Gaetan Duval who was in Seychelles last week as Guest of Honour at the graduation ceremony of the Seychelles Tourism Academy, was found floating in the sea in the vicinity of L’islette at Port Glaud on Monday afternoon.

Minister St Ange said Mr Chellen delivered and emotional and inspiring speech at the graduation ceremony where he advised the students to look forward to studying very well, take their studies and training very seriously to later on work for the benefit of their country.

Mr Chellen was one of the key players in bringing the Seychelles Tourism Academy where it is today and where students from there have gained the respect they deserve.

“To us Mr Chellen was our honorary invited guest here in Seychelles and it is our responsibility for us to make sure to assist his wife in all possible means as it is important in moments of sadness we are there beside his family to provide our assistance,” said Mr St Ange.

Minister St Ange also said that the Seychelles Tourism Academy was among those first called to identify the body, following which the secretary of the academy’s principal called his wife to inform her of the tragic incident and to offer the ministry’s sympathy.

Reporting the incident on Monday, the police said that the body of 52-year-old Harmon Chellen was found in the sea, presumed drowned, in the vicinity of L’islette at Port Glaud.

Mr Chellen, who is of Mauritian origin, was staying at a tourism establishment at Port Launay in the Port Glaud district. He was brought to the district’s police station at around 10am on Monday morning following reports that he had attempted to sexually assault a female worker at the establishment the previous night.

While at the station, where he was brought for questioning, Chellen, who was at the time not arrested, left without cooperating.

As the police were following up to establish the facts around the sexual assault allegations, a report made by a Port Glaud male resident at around 2.50pm informed the station that he had found a man floating in the sea near L’islette. The man, wh was presumed drowned, was later identified as the Mauritian who had earlier left the police station.

He arrived in the country on August 13 and was to go back to Mauritius that afternoon.

The case is under investigation while postmortem results are being awaited to confirm the man’s cause of death.

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