By Shakisa Harvey
Almost eight years after 13-year-old Trishanna Debidayal was struck down at a pedestrian crossing on her way home from school, her mother laments the painful reality that instead of celebrating her 21st birthday today with her in the flesh, she is left to reflect on memories.
Back then
Trishanna Debidayal, a second form student at the St Roses’ High School, was struck down on December 5, 2005 as she attempted to cross the Better Hope Public Road, East Coast Demerara.
A police press release said the child was crossing from north to south when a car proceeding east along the East Coast stopped to allow her to cross.
However, the driver of motor lorry GJJ 3006, which was travelling behind the car, failed to stop and on overtaking struck down the teenager, killing her on the spot.
Her father Jerrick Debidayal, who was on his way home when the accident occurred, recalled that persons in the area told him that his daughter was on the pedestrian crossing around 4 pm when she was hit by the truck.
The man said he was told that the wheel ran over her head and the vehicle dragged her several feet before coming to a halt.
A relative of the girl told Stabroek News that at the time of the accident the driver of the truck was drunk. He said this was discovered after breathalyzer test was done by the police.
“He overtake with the same speed and only applied brakes on the crossing,” the man said.
“After he hit the girl, he jump out the truck and opened the door of a car that was passing. He attempted to jump in but them boys hold he and keep he till the police come,” he said.
The truck driver Godfrey Gomes, a resident of Angoy’s Avenue, New Amsterdam, was sentenced to two years in jail in 2011, after he was found guilty of causing Debidayal’s death.
Then Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus had handed down the sentence at the Vigilance Magistrates’ Court, at the conclusion of Gomes’ trial.
Meanwhile, the child’s mother Agnes Debidayal had said that although she had received some justice, two years was not a strong enough penalty. “Two years for killing a child is not harsh. I feel that the penalty should be increased,” the woman had said. She had said she and her family would be lobbying for harsher penalties for those drivers who kill children on the roadways.
For Agnes, the verdict brought an end to five years of attending court hearings. Agnes said that looking at the man who killed her child had been very hard for her and she was comforted by the fact that the case had ended. She remembered the girl as beautiful, intelligent and religious. She also expressed gratitude to everyone who supported her during her time of grief.
Today
In a recent interview at her Kissoon’s Ltd workplace where she is employed as a clerk, Agnes, now 52, told Stabroek News she is still not satisfied with the ruling, terming the initial $40,000 bail and the two-year sentence “unreasonable”.
She said justice had not been served, as a harsher penalty would have been more fitting for such a heinous crime.
“After I run and scream for five whole years. I could not work. I could not get myself behind a desk for five whole years. And he barely got two years in prison. That is not fair,” a still grief-stricken Agnes told Stabroek News.
“That penalty is too light. He needed something so harsh he would not even think to do anything to cause another drop of blood to shed from another child. People need to see that they cannot get off so easily with something like that. I am counting on the media to put this message out there so the police and the judiciary could deal with this issue of causing death while drinking and driving, more seriously. If found guilty they should give them the same penalty as murder, especially when the incident occurs on the pedestrian crossing,” she declared.
She said she knows nothing can ever bring her daughter back but at least her family should have been more suitably compensated.
“Life does not have value in this country, especially when you are poor. What she had, no money could have bought,” Agnes cried.
Agnes expressed discontent over being offered $500,000 “for a child with so much potential…a child with a promising future.
“I have to fight the civil case with my lawyer and I will. I have to do it with a passion so they can hear me. It is so devastating,” she continued.
She said almost eight years on no one in her family has come to grips with the tragedy. Not her two other daughters Alana and Rosanna, not her and not her husband Jerrick.
“There is no excitement. Everybody just living because we have life in our body and we have to,” Agnes lamented.
“Our family is not as happy as before on this day. We can never be the same, especially at Christmas time. Just days before the incident, she wrote her Christmas list with all that she wanted. I kept it along with other little tokens of her in my bag, but all got stolen when thieves broke in at the Camp Street Kissoon’s branch where I was working at the time. I was so hurt. I used to keep them to remind me of her,” Agnes said.
She reminisced at the fond memories of her daughter’s brief stay on earth before her life was jolted to a sudden halt on that fatal day.
“When I checked behind her door that day, I saw things she [had] planned to do for [the] next year. She had like a calendar. January 5—Spanish class, and so on. That was the foundation she set. Tell me where she would be today?” she said.
The woman explained that she found it very disheartening to know “that I put all my effort to get my children to be better than me and that drunk driver came and messed with the plan. I am just an ordinary clerk. I wanted all my children to do better.”
She described Trishanna as “always enthused.” The young girl, she said, had “a crush on religion, and a crush on her community. She was always dancing and actively involved in the community. She used to dance at the temple and take part in lots of activities. She was such a loving child.”
The grieving woman told Stabroek News that now all she has are blown-up pictures of Trishanna around her home.
Agnes, now a member of the Mothers in Black Organisation, hopes to have her daughter’s story engage the attention of all drivers and the public at large, to send a message of the need to exercise care and caution on the roadways, which she said can ever be stressed enough.
She said it is her goal to aid in putting an end to the heedless road carnage and bring justice to the families of the victims.
In addition, she said, she plans to open a trust fund for traffic accident victims and she has her daughter’s memories to thank for inspiring her to make such an instrumental step.
In observation of what would have been Debidayal’s 21st birthday today, Agnes told Stabroek News that a day of prayers would be held among family and friends.
