The local sports community is today mourning the death of talented all-round athlete Dwia Blyden.

The former Southampton Rangers cricketer and PHC Zebras footballer was found in a non-responsive state at an undisclosed location in England yesterday and efforts to revive him in a hospital proved unsuccessful.

Blyden, who celebrated his 28th birthday in April, had been involved in a professional boxing bout just moments before he suffered what is believed to have been a heart attack.

“Apparently he was fighting in one of his first professional fights and he told his cornerman that he didn’t want to fight any longer because he was feeling sick,” Victor Blyden, the late athlete’s father, told The Royal Gazette. “He went outside for awhile to get some air and didn’t come right back. So someone went out to check on him and found him slumped over onto the ground from where he sat in a non-responsive state.

“It still hasn’t hit me that he’s actually gone because they think he died of a heart attack, and he is a young man. Normally young men don’t get heart attacks, so we are waiting for an autopsy to find out what actually happened.”

As well as PHC, Blyden played football locally with North Village and Robin Hood before relocating to Britain several years ago.