Up to eight persons were yesterday rushed to the West Demerara Regional Hospital after a pick-up truck ran into a minibus along the Crane Public Road, West Coast Demerara.
Some of the injured have been identified as bus driver Shawn Praimdatnarine 44; bus conductor Nazim Khan, 24; Naazalita Punawattie, 25; Kelly Jordan, 15; and Lynden Garnett, 38.
The accident occurred around 6pm, according to eyewitness Sunita Jagdeo, who said that was the time the operators of minibus BRR 1664 stopped at a bus stop on the Crane Public road to pick up a passenger. The bus driver was about to return to his lane when the driver of a Toyota Tundra, with licence plate GPP 7985, collided with him from behind.
“The impact was so much that it send the minibus into the lantern post and the whole village get blackout. People start climb out from the back of the bus because they first got the impact,” Jagdeo recalled.
She added that the passenger who entered the bus on the public road was pinned in the front seat and it took public-spirited citizens 15 minutes to extract him from the wreckage.
Punawattie, who broke her leg in the accident but was later discharged from the hospital, said “After the bus man pick up the passenger, all of a sudden we feel this sudden impact and before we know it we end up into the lantern post.”
She said that the bus was travelling to Parika.
Garnett, who was the passenger seated in the front of the minibus, also suffered a broken leg.
The driver of the Tundra is now in police custody at the Vreed-en-Hoop police Station assisting with the investigations.
