A mother of two has died after she was struck down while crossing the road to take a bus from her workplace on Saturday night.
It was supposed to be a casual walk that Ann Mohammed, 34, of Coverden, East Bank Demerara, would make every night after she gots off of her 8:30 pm shift as a bartender at the Prairie Hotel to go home, but quickly turned tragic after an accident between two vehicles claimed her life.
“Well, she does work at the Prairie and she been there for almost a year. She does go in for 10 and come off at 8 and around 8:35 I get a call from her phone and I thought it was she but then I didn’t recognize the voice and the person said to come quick that she was in an accident,” Vinood Mohammed, Ann’s husband told Stabroek News yesterday. He said that he was on his way to the Providence Stadium when he received the call about his wife being in an accident. While he didn’t think that it was serious because of the tone of the person who called him, Vinood said that his perspective quickly changed after he arrived on the scene and saw a large crowd. “After I see all of that people I said to myself that this thing can’t be anything small and I started looking but I wasn’t seeing she,” he explained. He said that after he continued up the road he made the terrifying discovery of his wife’s body pinned under a Toyota Hilux. “I rush to she and I check she pulse but she didn’t have any and I knew she was dead, I knew she was dead,” the tearful man related to Stabroek News. Mohammed’s body was then taken to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre where she was pronounced dead.
While two vehicles, a Toyota Hilux (GJJ 6458) and a Toyota Fielder Wagon (number plate was not on at the Soesdyke Police Outpost), were involved, an eyewitness report and the police report on the accident are different. According to an eyewitness, the Toyota Hilux had just exited a yard (which is approximately 100 feet from the scene of the accident) and onto the East Bank highway, heading south, while the Toyota Fielder Wagon was speeding south along the road when the collision happened. “I don’t know if because of the speed the wagon was going with he ain’t see she on the corner but he slammed into she and he pitch into the side of the pickup truck and she get pinned under and it start to spin out of control,” the eyewitness related to Stabroek News.
According to the police, while the Hilux was travelling along the highway, the speeding Wagon tried to undertake the Hilux, hitting it on its left side, causing it to spin out of control and collide with Mohammed on the road corner, trapping her body underneath.
Stabroek News was told that while the Hilux driver is in police custody and is expected to be charged today, the driver of the wagon was released. This has been criticized by Mohammed’s family.
“First off, the car driver is a known wild oats. Everybody from here knows that he does drive fast and wild on the road. If he going from here to that corner right there is like he trying to full the gauge and he always saying that he got the fastest car,” Vinood told Stabroek News yesterday. “On the other hand, we know the driver for the Hilux and he is a good driver, he does never drive fast or reckless like the other so I don’t know why is he alone, why even he, being charged,” he said, questioning why the police released the Wagon driver, given the condition of his car and the particulars of the accident.
“Police make their judgement. They had to do their investigation and what’s not and I can’t dispute what they are saying even though it might be questionable. But, shouldn’t both parties be charged too? Shouldn’t he be charged for speeding, which is very evident that he was? Something should definitely happen to him,” one of Mohammed’s relatives reasoned to Stabroek News yesterday. Mohammed’s family said that they believe that if anyone is to be charged, it should be the Fielder Wagon driver and not the Toyota Hilux driver.
When Stabroek News visited the Soesdyke Police Outpost, the Wagon was without a number plate.
