A tractor operator of Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice died yesterday morning when the tractor toppled into a trench at Abary Creek and pinned him while another worker escaped with minor injuries.

Reports are that Radesh Deochand, 39, was driving along a dam when he lost control of the tractor and ended up in the trench.

Deochand’s wife, Takurdai ‘Mala’ Deochand said her husband was employed with the owners of AH & L Kissoon Ltd at their rice field in the Abary Creek “on and off” for a few years.

She told Stabroek News that during crop time he stayed in the creek to work and would come out occasionally to spend time with her and their four children, ages 13, 11, nine and two-years-old. She said he came home only last week and returned on Saturday.

Around 3:30 pm she was busy tending to her eschallot plants when she received a call from her in-laws that “a tractor turn over and pin he down in the trench” and that he had died. She also learnt that other workers had to get another tractor to pull him out.

Deochand’s sister, Niomee Lakeram, 36, said she and other relatives learnt since around 1 pm that he was involved in an accident but were not sure that he had died.

She said too that they did not know how to break the news to his wife but kept calling her to find out what she was doing and if she was alright. When they were able to confirm that he was indeed dead they called her with the sad news.

The distraught Takurdai was taking the news of her husband’s death really badly. She said her two-year-old child was born with a cleft palate and she and her husband were making arrangements for him to have a surgery done very soon.

Apart from that she said her nine-year-old daughter is mute and is epileptic. She said she would now find it very difficult to care for her children.