On Tuesday, December 18, a boat owned by the Region Two administration and another owned and piloted by Harrinarine Bhagwandin, 42, of Abrams Creek, Upper Pomeroon River, collided while travelling in the vicinity of Siriki, Upper Pomeroon River.
Persaud said that on the afternoon of the accident, rain was falling and they were just about to turn into the Pomeroon from a creek when the other boat collided with them.
“It was raining and the place had good light, so the boats didn’t need light, and we were about to turn when we see a boat heading towards us, and I shouted ‘look a boat coming.’ It was like 4 feet away and the next thing we know we collided, and then after we flew up in the air and ended up in some bushes, I thought we died because there was no life jackets and only a few of us could swim,” Persaud recalled.
“People started screaming and then started panicking; kind of like a near death experience.”
He related that after they manoeuvred the boat out of the bushes, they saw persons floating in the water and turned back, but another boat which approached them advised that they should go to shore and get help, so they proceeded back to Charity.
Persaud went on to tell Stabroek News that the captain brought his passengers to shore and then went back to assist the victims, but by then there were two other boats on the scene that had already gone and reported that all the passengers were dead.
He said that the accusations about the regional boat causing the accident were all false; the other boat swerved across, he said, hitting the regional boat:“It was the quick thinking of the boat captain that saved us on that boat or else the it would have been catastrophic; it is so sad what happened to the six persons.”
Passengers in the Region 2 boat were staff from the One Laptop per Family project, and were said to be returning from a distribution exercise when the accident occurred.
The only survivor of the accident in the other boat, Eli Orlando Rodrigues, is said to be in a stable state in the Charity hospital.
The pilot of the regional boat, Lall Ramadhin, who was held by the police was released on $60,000 station bail on Thursday.
Amerita and her brother Rajkumar Singh will be laid to rest today in Charity.
