Terron Berkshire, 14, died yesterday after he was hit by a minibus outside the Hope Secondary School, while playing Phagwah with other students.
According to police, Berkshire was struck down at about 4:15pm, at the East Coast Demerara (ECD) location by the minibus. Police say that the bus, bearing licence plate BMM 576, was “proceeding along the roadway when it was alleged that the pedestrian [Berkshire], who was playing Phagwah with other students, ran into the path of the vehicle and was struck down.”
The boy was later pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Hospital. The bus driver was later taken into police custody.
Berkshire’s friends, who witnessed the accident yesterday, disputed the police’s account and said that the minibus driver was speeding and the teen was in the corner of the road at the time he was struck.
According to 16-year-old Telfurn James, he and some friends were on the opposite side of the road when they witnessed the accident. Speaking from Berkshire’s 1 Section C Clonbrook, ECD home, James said that the Hope Secondary School had only just concluded a Phagwah ceremony and persons were going home when the minibus “swerve out of a BK truck and into the young man who was in the corner.”
According to James, who also attends the school, Berkshire was “a few metres away from the pedestrian crossing.”
Another eyewitness, Trayon Petrie, who is in the same grade as Berkshire, said after the accident, the minibus driver stopped some distance away, disembarked the vehicle and examined it instead of rendering assistance.
It was another witness, Trevon Sampson, who stopped a vehicle and rushed with Berkshire to the hospital. According to Sampson, “Me and a next boy put he in a car. By the time we reach BV he [Berkshire] start bleed through he mouth and nose and foam start come out he ears.
By the time we reach the hospital they tek he in the emergency room and a lady come out and tell we that he not breathing and he heart not pumping.” Two minutes later, Sampson said the nurse at the Georgetown Public Hospital informed that Berkshire had passed away. The boys were clearly traumatised by the ordeal and were unable to say how they were feeling at the time.
Meanwhile, Berkshire’s mother, Patricia Berkshire, was too overcome by grief to speak.
Sitting in a chair and surrounded by relations trying to comfort her, she moaned, “Ma baby! That’s ma baby!”
Patricia said she was at home when she received the message that her son had passed away as a result of an accident. “He’s a loving child.
That’s ma baby. He used to hug up he mommy…” the woman wailed. The boy was the second of her two children.
Many of Berkshire’s schoolmates were at his home last evening when this newspaper visited.
To his many of his friends, he was described as a kind “easy going kid.” “He never used to fight. When people tell he something he just don’t get time to bother with nobody,” a classmate said.
