Three persons: Antonia Henry, 87, her daughter Melina Emmanuel, 40, and her granddaughter, Akese Jerome, 8, were killed on Sunday night after a speeding driver lost control of his car and plowed into them and others sitting on the curbside of a road at Kairuni, Soesdyke-Linden Highway.
While the three family members were killed, two other persons, Rodwell Jerome, 50, and Alena Persaud, 8, were left hospitalised. The driver of the car, Kevin Bizzeth, 39, a fireman of Rainbow City, Mackenzie, is in police custody.
At the time of the accident, 9.50 pm, the victims were waiting for their relatives.
The police said that Bizzeth was proceeding south along the eastern side of the road at a fast rate and lost control. As a result, he collided with the curb on the left side of the road before the car careened into the group of persons who were sitting on the side of the road on the said curb.
Jerome was picked up in an unconscious state and was taken to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre by a passing vehicle. She was pronounced dead on arrival. Her grandmother, Henry, and mother, Emmanuel, were picked up in an unconscious state and were taken to the Mackenzie Hospital, where they were pronounced dead on arrival.
Jerome and Persaud were also picked up in an unconscious state and taken to the Mackenzie Hospital. Jerome is pre-sently under observation at the Mackenzie Hospital, while Alena was transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where she was placed in intensive care.
Commander Mahendra Siwnarine, responsible for regional Division 4(B), told Stabroek News yesterday that the two are still in critical condition.
The police said that a breathalyser test was carried out on the driver and no alcohol was found on his breath.
When Stabroek News visited Kairuni, relatives of the family and a neighbour were gathered at the house next door to the deceased family’s home. One of Henry’s granddaughters, who requested anonymity but who was with her relatives on Sunday night, recalled the accident. The young mother of one said that her grandmother told them that her uncles were coming from around the corner. She said they all left to go and wait for the men when she saw the vehicle, which was speeding, coming from George-town. “Me and my grandmother was in here and them tell me, we uncle them was coming from this corner round there by the shop…so she (Henry) end up saying let’s go out there and wait on them fuh see if them coming so we gone out there waiting,” the young woman said.
She said that while waiting, her relatives sat on the curb while she stood a short distance away from the roadside. When she saw the car, she told them to move towards where she was standing. “I see the car speeding coming from Georgetown. All when I go fuh say granny ya’ll come let’s go in, I see the car dodge out suh and it go over the other side of the road then it swerve in back and when I watch the car swerve out back when it done do what it have to do and then it swerve in back and it hit them,” she said.
Henry’s granddaughter said that the car swerved at least three times, going from east to west, across the road and during the second or third swerve the car hit her family before it swerved towards the western side of the road and halted.
She said that after the car stopped, she called for her cousin, Alena, who is Henry’s great-granddaughter, but the child was rushing to her other cousin, Akese. She said that she didn’t see any movement from her other cousin and she instantly thought the child was dead. I said ‘Alena! Alena’ and when I see she get up and come here from there and she rush to the other lil one I seh well she die on the spot because no movements,” she said.
Afterwards, she went to the driver, who seemed panicked. “I go to he and I said driver like you ain’t seeing. He said he ain’t see nobody …I said like you drunk,” she told this newspaper. She then said that the man said he was not drunk and that he did not see anybody there. The rest of her relatives scoffed as Emmanuel’s 13-year-old daughter said that she doesn’t understand how the man “didn’t see anybody there”.
The family members broke down in tears as they said that they were shocked that their grandmother was no longer with them. They said that Henry, hailing from Region One, moved to Kairuni several years back. Henry settled there with her seven children and farmed as a means to get by, her grandchildren told this newspaper. They said that Emmanuel was a mother of eight and a housewife. Emmanuel’s 13-year-old daughter and her 10-year-old son are staying with their cousins at Kairuni, while they wait for their older siblings.
