A Plaisance hairdresser died early yesterday morning when she crashed into a fence along the Goedverwagting Railway Embankment, East Coast Demerara.
Dead is Lurlene Forde, 40, also known as Roxanne, of Prince William Street, Plaisance, East Coast Demerara.
Police said the accident occurred around 4.30 am when Forde, who was allegedly speeding, lost control of the vehicle and collided with a concrete fence.
Forde, who worked as a hairdresser at the Universal Salon, sustained several injuries and was subsequently taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, where she was pronounced dead upon arrival.
Forde’s mother Iona Percival said she last spoke with her daughter, who lived in the flat below hers, sometime on Wednesday night.
The woman’s first clue that something was amiss came when the phone started ringing shortly after 5am. There were a few calls but she did not answer. However, she eventually took a call from her grandson in the United States.
“Granny, morning, I just get up, I want you sit down,” she recalled him saying.
“Granny I just got a call and Roxanne got in an accident,” she further recounted him saying.
The woman said she told him not to worry about her and to calm down because he had to work and go to college and she promised to call him back.
Subsequently, two of her daughter’s friends visited and one of them informed her of the accident. “Mom, Roxanne crashed and died,” she recalled the woman saying.
Percival, who also lost her only son in a car accident in which he was the driver, said she was in a state of shock upon hearing the news that her only daughter had also died the same way.
She recalled asking for more information about the accident and then she called a close family friend, who took her to the hospital to identify the body.
Percival said although she was unclear about what exactly happened to her daughter, she was told that Forde was found in a trench and the car was on one side and she was on another side. The family was also given conflicting stories, she said, while noting that they were told that Forde had been at the Palm Court nightclub, where there had been an incident. The family was told that money was stolen from a friend of Forde and after an alarm was raised the security at the club managed to find the money and eject the guilty party. After they left, the family was told, Forde noticed a car trailing her. A friend also told the family that she was calling Forde’s phone to keep her alert as she was driving home. (Oliceia Simon)
