No charges have been filed against any of the parties in an almost year-old accident in which former Local Govern-ment Minister Kellawan Lall collided with a motorcyclist and a passenger he was carrying at the time.
John July, an ex-policeman, was the passenger and months after having to hobble around with pieces of steel jutting out of his left thigh, doctors finally made a decision to remove them last week. For him, it was a very small step forward in a case that has been at a virtual standstill for almost a year.
“Nothing has happened in the matter and I am disappointed that nothing has happened,” July told Stabroek News in relation to the September 4, 2010 accident. Although the steel has been removed from his leg, he is still in pain. He is unable to bend the leg and walks with the assistance of crutches.
In a letter to the editor published in Stabroek News on September 14, Lall, now Guyana’s ambassador to Bra-zil, said the accident occurred on the bridge at Liliendaal, which was under repair at the time. He said only the southern lane was open, while the northern side was cordoned off with large signs urging road users to be cautious.
Further, he said he and the driver of the motorcycle as well as three police ranks visited the scene of the accident, where it was agreed that the spot where the accident occurred was about eight feet from the eastern end of the bridge. “I was travelling east and the motorcycle was heading west, towards the city. Given the length of the bridge, it was clear that I had practically cleared the bridge. And given the fact that only one lane was available to roads users, and given the fact that I was driving a fairly large vehicle, there was insufficient space (about two feet) left for the motorcycle to pass me going in the opposite direction,” Lall noted.
However, July, who said there have been inaccuracies in the press about the accident, is maintaining that at the time the motorcycle was parked in the vicinity of the bridge at the Liliendaal Rail-way Embankment. He said he and his friend were coming from a wedding reception and they were confronted by heavy traffic, including a rice truck in a very long line approaching a bridge.
According to July, he advised his friend, who was the rider of the motor cycle, to park in the corner until the traffic congestion had eased. He said that this was done and “like the Minister he couldn’t wait because he reverse out with one speed to overtake the other vehicles and collided with us.”
He added that the Minister later drove off, leaving him and his friend. A passing motorist, he noted, witnessed the incident and chased behind the Minister’s vehicle but returned a short while later.
July said that while he was lying on the road, no one stopped to render assistance. He said a while later men with torchlights returned to the scene and placed him in the Minister’s vehicle, which had returned along with a white car. He said his friend was retrieved from the bushes where he had been flung, and he was placed in the car and they were taken to the Georgetown Hospital.
July broke his silence from his hospital bed days after the incident, after being instructed not to speak about it. He has since been continuously crying out for justice.
But Lall, in his letter, denied driving away from the accident, saying that after his vehicle “was hit,” he immediately stopped. “Almost immediately, persons who had gathered assisted in placing the injured Mr July onto the back seat of my vehicle, after which he was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital,” he wrote.
Lall said July “ought to be ashamed of himself” for saying he had his “lights off, hit the cycle in a dark spot and then drove away.” He said too that while he did not see the statement made by the driver of the motorcycle, in his presence and that of the investigating officer at the Sparen-daam Police Station, the driver stated that the brightness of the front lights of my vehicle contributed to the accident.
Additionally, he said that July sustained injuries to his leg not as a result of the collision, but as a result of the motorcycle colliding with the metal rails of the bridge. “The only time he came into contact with my vehicle was when he was placed in the back seat,” he said.
Also, Police Commissioner Henry Greene is on record as saying that it appeared that the motorcyclist was in the wrong, based on his statement to police. According to Greene, the motorcyclist claimed that he struck the metal rail then hit the minister’s vehicle.
