An accident involving a speeding minibus on the Wellington Park Public Road has left a 17-year-old girl dead; the driver is in police custody.
Dead is Hemwattie Rampersaud, also known as Vandana.
According her mother, Sabita Rampersaud, she had asked her only daughter to go and buy some items in the shop nearby. A few minutes later, a neighbour called her and told her “come see you daughter get knock down”. She said she could not believe her ears since she had just come in from road after putting her youngest son, Keon, in a bus to go to school.
She told Stabroek News that when she got to the scene of the accident, just a few minutes away, her daughter was just lying there. She said she tried to lift her to put her in a vehicle to take her to the hospital, but noticed that her neck could not support her head. Vandana was rushed to the Port Mourant Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
One eyewitness told Stabroek News that he was on the road around 07:45 hours when he saw a Route 63A minibus “coming with plenty speed, and next thing yuh know ah bus start turn round ‘bout two time and same time”.
Vandana was just emerging from her on a bicycle. The minibus hit her “with full force”, the eyewitness said, smashing her and the bicycle. He told Stabroek News that the driver of the minibus told them that the passengers in the bus were trying to catch the ‘launch’ to go over Suriname.
Another passerby told this newspaper that when he saw the extent of the damage to the minibus he though it must have hit “a horse or something”. When told that it was a girl, he said, he told the persons there, without seeing her condition that she could not be alive
.The driver of the minibus has been held by the police and investigations are continuing.
