A father of five was last night struck dead by a car on the Vryheid’s Lust Public Road as he was returning home, mere minutes, after bidding the friends he had visited good night.
Lawrence Gouveia, age 59, of Lot 277 Second Street, East Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara had earlier in the afternoon left his home to pay a visit to his friends who live a few houses away from where he was killed. While eyewitness reports vary, some say that he was standing a few feet away from his friends, on the opposite side of the Presbyterian Church, home waiting to cross the road when he was struck by a car speeding east.
It appears that the man died instantly given the amount of blood on the road and the huge gash in his head. However many persons at the scene expressed anger that a passing ambulance refused to take the man to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
“Can you believe that they left that man on the road a long time no one wanted to take him to the hospital… and they didn’t even check to see if he dead already but from the plenty blood they get frighten even the ambulance say he is a corpse and refused to take him” said a driver who stopped upon seeing the man lying on the ground. It was the police who took him to the GPHC where again he waited some 15 minutes before porters removed his body.
His daughter Nitra Gouveia told Stabroek News that she received the news that her already sick father was killed sometime after 9 pm.
She said it was her sister’s husband who lived not far from the scene who called to inform the family of the man’s horrific demise.
Both of the man’s sons work with a Canadian mining company and had only returned to work on Wednesday having been out to visit their father for a while.
As Nitra was overcome with emotion, her husband Anthony Bento described Gouveia as an avid reader who was “sickly” and as such did not work but assisted with his grandchildren’s academic studies. “He is always reading.
He could not work because he is very sickly but from when you miss him he is with a book or helping his grandchildren with their homework” Bento said.
Police last night took the driver of the vehicle, which struck Gouveia, into custody at the Sparendaam police station.
