A guard was killed on Thursday in a collision with a bus along the Rupert Craig Highway, East Coast Demerara.
Christopher Singh, 62, of Industry, was reportedly proceeding on his motorcycle, CH 5818, north along the University of Guyana (UG) Road and across the highway when the collision occurred.
Singh, who was pitched several feet away, was subsequently rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. A post-mortem examination has ruled that he died due to a broken neck and fractured skull.
The driver of the bus was taken into custody by police, who later released him on station bail.
According to Singh’s son, Ram, the driver of the bus told the police that Singh had “jumped the light” while crossing the road, which resulted in the collision. “According to the information we receiving, the bus man seh that he was going west along the highway and he [Singh] jumped the [traffic] light and that’s how he crash into the bus but that don’t make any sense,” Ram explained, while pointing out that the damage to his father’s motorcycle suggests otherwise. “If you look at the bike, the whole front and everything at the side is good. No damage. Even the mirrors intact. But the back was lash in so it don’t make any sense what he is saying. It don’t make any sense at all,” he added.
The accident occurred around 7.05 am as Singh was reportedly going to a nearby gas station to refill his bike, before returning home from a night of work, according to Ram.
He explained that an eyewitness told the family that the way the driver of the bus described the accident was completely different from how it actually happened. “The man had the light to cross the road and is the bus jump. The bus coming speeding, fast, fast and run over the road and hit he [Singh] bike and pitch he off, far, far,” a member of Singh’s family recalled the eyewitness saying.
Ram noted that the police informed the family that they are working on acquiring CCTV footage from the traffic light, which should shed some light on what actually happened.
“He don’t normally use the public road like that but is because the embankment road close off he use it,” Singh’s wife added as she broke down in tears on Friday.
The man’s family wants the bus driver to be charged and tried before the courts.
When Stabroek News visited the scene of the accident on Friday, several drivers, who operate short-drop cars from the highway into UG, explained that it is customary for buses plying the East Coast to Georgetown route to be speeding and ignoring the stoplights.
While there is usually a police officer regulating the traffic every morning because of the congestion, at the time of the accident there wasn’t any.
