An accident on Saturday night on the Corentyne killed a woman and left her cousin injured.
Dead is 20-year-old Onika Taylor, also known as ‘Nicky’, of Ulverston village and formerly of Islington, East Bank Berbice.
An eyewitness said he was standing on his bridge, facing the road, at about 8.40 pm when a blue 9-seater minibus travelling east swerved off the road and onto the road shoulders, hitting two persons also walking in an easterly direction. He told Stabroek News that he stood aghast for a moment, not believing what he had just witnessed, before running to the rescue of the two persons.
He said when he got there one of the girls, later identified as Taylor, was literally under the bus. The other girl, Fiona Walters, was a few feet away, he said. After hearing the impact many people started to come out and render assistance. The bus had to be lifted up to retrieve the motionless body of Taylor.
Yesterday morning, Walters, who was treated at the New Amsterdam Hospital and sent away, related to Stabroek News that she and ‘Nicky’ went to the shop to buy juice. They also bought a ‘big foot’ which they were eating on their way back home. She said that “Nicky tek away the big foot from me” and is the last she could remember from Saturday night. She sustained bruises on her toes, knees, face and hands.
According to Esther Jefford, mother of Taylor, a relative had just visited them so they sent “Nicky and she (Fiona) foh buy some things for them. Next thing you know Yonnette calling me saying that them girls meet up with accident”. Before she had gotten to the scene some two blocks away “they already tek them girls to the hospital.” Taylor was pronounced dead when she got to the hospital. She told Stabroek News that her daughter had been engaged in January and ever since then she seldom left the house. She wants “to see justice for me child.
They just deh walking pon the road and you gon knock them from back. I want see some justice”, she said.
Taylor has left to mourn her two sisters, mother, aunt, cousins and others.
The police have since arrested the driver, whom some people said had been beaten in his apparently inebriated state as he staggered out of the bus.
Meanwhile, police said that on Friday Marlyn Clarke of Crane Housing Scheme died after being hit while attempting to cross the Goed Fortuin Public Road. She was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital where she died while receiving treatment. (Adrian Smith)