GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - The death of a teenage beauty pageant queen who was beaten and strangled while fighting three other women was due to a heart condition, an autopsy report said Wednesday.
Kenisha Baird, 18, died on a sidewalk Monday evening during a fight with three rival pageant contestants who attacked her, witnesses told police. A small crowd circled the brawling women chanting "let them fight," the Guyana Chronicle newspaper reported Wednesday.Baird, who required monthly visits to a doctor for an enlarged heart, collapsed during the fight. She was the reigning Miss Mocha Arcadia and an aspirant in the coming Miss East Bank beauty pageant.
Baird was on her way to a fitting with a seamstress in her hometown of Mocha, a rural community about 16 kilometres from the capital, when she was attacked. She would have turned 19 on Friday.
A copy of the autopsy report said that Baird died of heart failure but it did not say that the beating triggered her death. Police said they detained the three women but later released them.
Baird's relatives said they were dissatisfied with the autopsy findings, saying they should have been allowed to witness the Wednesday morning examination.
The fight was reportedly sparked by an earlier dispute involving the young women, witnesses told authorities.
