A planned day of fun at the creek ended before it could begin when a one-year-old child died after he was hit by the bus that would have transported his family.
Ryan Hemanchal of 37 Better Hope South, East Coast Demerara was pronounced dead on arrival at the St Joseph Mercy Hospital mid-morning yesterday. According to his relatives he was run over by one of the mini-bus’s back wheels.
The child’s mother Tricia Goberdhan related that she was inside the bottom flat of the two-storey house making final preparations to leave for the day at the creek when she heard someone scream. When she ran outside the driver of the bus was running into the yard with the child in his arms. No one has a clear idea of how the tragic incident occurred even though several persons were in the bus at the time.
Goberdhan said that she left the mini bus driver, who is a close friend of the family, playing with the child on the table underneath the house. She posited that he left the boy on the table when someone asked him to go and pick up an extra ice cooler from a friend.
She said that he might not have known that the child followed him out the gate and hence reversed the bus and hit him, realizing only when he felt the impact that something was behind the bus.
Goberdhan’s cousin Natasha told Stabroek News that after the incident they rushed him to hospital in the said bus.
Goberdhan related that even though they live on a quiet street she always kept the gate locked but the driver must have left it open when he walked out. Holding her five year-old daughter Goberdhan said “I crying all morning like I ain’t got no more tears.” Relatives and neighbours gathered to comfort the grieving woman.
A neighbour who was also going to the creek said that she was in the yard and did not even realize the child had gone outside. “Everything happened so fast,” the woman said. (Melissa Charles)
