Two West Coast Demerara residents were yesterday morning killed and a third was injured when a car slammed into them on the Meeten-Meer-Zorg Public Road as they stood in conversation.
Dead are Guyana Sugar Corporation employee Hasib Bulla also known as Hakam, aged 50, and minibus conductor Juman Ally, aged 56. Latchman Chand is currently a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital nursing a broken leg and abrasions about his body.
The driver of the vehicle is in police custody assisting with investigations.
“Them man stand up dem till in de grass gaffing and Juman went tapping a cigarette in he hand and the man who foot bruk he went pun a motor bike and when me look me see a white 212 speeding coming …from town side and it crash into all three a dem,” an eyewitness, Mohammad, only name given, told Stabroek News.
The man explained that the biker was thrown up in the air and landed not far from his bike while the other two men were dragged some 200 ft before the vehicle came to a halt.
Residents rushed to the assistance of the three men but could see that the two men who had been standing by the roadside were already dead. Nonetheless all three persons were taken to the Leonora Cottage Hospital where Ally and Bulla were pronounced dead and Chand was transferred to the GPH.
When Stabroek News visited the Lot 150 East Meeten-Meer-Zorg home of Bulla his wife, Nafeza Ali, sat weeping as she clutched the younger of the man’s two grandchildren. She said that she and her husband had been married for 25 years and she had known him all her adult life. He was the sole breadwinner of the home she said. She described him as a loving and caring husband, father and grandfather who was actively involved in one of the community’s Mosques.
Ali talked about the plans that the father of three girls had made, saying he was looking forward to holding a Muslim religious function for the two-year-old girl.
He served at the GuySuCo Estate Water Management division at Uitvlugt for a number of years and was waiting to place orders for the company nearby when he died.
At Ally’s Lot 27 De Willem South home his elder sister, Shirool Rajkissioon, was still trying to absorb the fact that he had died. “He left home round 6.30 [am] to go wait on the bus fuh pick he up at Thala Dam, and like nah 10 minutes after me see a bai come running saying Juman reach up in accident …by the time me reach he done went hospital and by the time we go there dem say he dead,” she related.
She explained that her brother lived with her and had never been married or had any children. She said he was “a quiet soul” who would “drink he lil rum” under the downstairs of the home and relax or go to sleep in his hammock afterwards.
His family who gathered at his home to give his sister support also said what a quiet person Ali was.
Police later in a press release stated that they were investigating the incident, and so far their investigations had revealed that Bulla and Ally were in conversation on the roadway when a driver lost control of his vehicle and struck them.
According to the release the driver of the vehicle is in police custody assisting with the investigations.
Autopsies are scheduled to be performed on the two tomorrow.
