A truck driver was on Tuesday crushed to death under the tray of his truck in Parfait Harmonie, West Bank Demerara while he was carrying out maintenance work.
Gowkarran Persaud, 38, was pinned for fifteen minutes after the hydraulic tube holding up the tray snapped, sending the tray crashing down on him.
The incident occurred around 8:30 am and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the West Demerara Regional Hospital an hour later.
A post-mortem revealed that he died as result of compression in his chest.
His wife, Diana who witnessed the ordeal, said she was standing in front of the truck when she heard the crashing sound and she ran around to see what had happened. She said her husband was stuck under the tray and she started to scream.
She said he tried to calm her while telling her what to do to fix the hydraulic tube in its right place and lift the tray.
She said as she tried to fix the tube neighbours rushed into her yard and tried to lift the tray up. “I try to fix the tube but I couldn’t manage it and I run to the front of the truck and try to start it to do anything but I couldn’t save him… I couldn’t save my husband,” a distraught and weeping Diana told Stabroek News.
“I didn’t know what to do to lift the tray to save him if I did know I woulda save me husband…I didn’t know, I didn’t know. By the time people come he was already breathing slow and when they lift him out he was cover in oil and gasoline,” she recounted. “I can’t tek it I coulda done more to save him. How I gon live without him? If I de lift the tray he woulda live but I couldn’t.”
Diana broke down in tears as she related how she tried frantically to get a vehicle to carry him to the hospital.
“All the way down to the hospital I was giving air in his mouth but he wasn’t breathing and I was giving him air,” she said. “My husband was a good person. He was a good father and husband. Twelve years…”
Persaud leaves to mourn his wife and three children.
