A 62-year-old pedal cyclist, who was struck down in a hit-and-run accident along the Liliendaal Railway Embankment on Friday night, succumbed at a city hospital early yesterday morning.
The driver who struck Frederick Alexander Blue, of Lot 30 Second Street, Liliendaal, fled the scene after the accident, which occurred around 7.15pm.
Up to yesterday, police had not been able to ascertain identifying details about the vehicle that hit Blue.
The Guyana Police Force, in a press release, said that upon visiting the scene, initial inspections suggested that Blue was either proceeding east or west along the southern side of the road when he was struck down by a vehicle that was proceeding west along the same side of the road.
As a result of the collision, Blue fell to the southern parapet of the road. He suffered injuries about his body including to his head. He was picked up in an unconscious condition and transported to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).
Blue succumbed to his injuries around 3.25am yesterday.
At the dead man’s home yesterday, his sister, Esther Blue, told Sunday Stabroek that she was none the wiser about how her brother met his demise.
The woman said her family learnt of the accident after being alerted by a visitor that Frederick had been in accident and had already been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
Esther rushed to the hospital, where she claims she was “pushed around” due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place.
“I am not beating up on the staff of the hospital but the service was horrible. I understand the situation with the COVID-19 but at least the staff can be a little more humane…..At one stage I had to get heated to be able to get service,” said the woman, who said she was not allowed on the hospital’s premises.
While outside of the hospital, Esther said she was not provided with any information.
After about two hours, she said a security guard approached her and she asked if there was any news about her brother. “…Eventually she came out and she called me and then she asked for like a contact number and whatever… low and behold when I got real heated and walked into A&E [Accident and Emergency Unit], I met another set of hostile security. I proceeded and went straight in to find out. They did not know all this time he was there, which was more than two hours, they did not know that a relative was outside,” Esther related.
Up to that time, Esther said her brother was still unidentified. “They got him as a no name person. Only to find out, they glad that this person come now because they need to do a CT scan and they need to do an X-ray. So if I didn’t insist and go on the inside, he probably would have died without even a try,” she said.
Esther believes that at the time of the accident her brother was either heading to or returning from his friends in Bel-Air. She said it is a norm for him to visit his friends every afternoon.
She noted that the police have been very cooperative and they have since promised to try their “utmost best” to locate the driver responsible for Frederick’s death. “The police said they will do their utmost best… they said they are going to check the area for cameras and stuff like that to see if they might pick up who it might have been,” Esther said.
