A 41-year-old mother of two was on Monday night fatally struck down while crossing the Mon Repos Public Road, East Coast Demerara, and the driver has since been taken into custody by the police.
The dead woman has been identified as Sandra Panday called ‘Radha’, a cook, of Lot 136 Third Street, Mon Repos North, East Coast Demerara.
Police in a statement yesterday reported that the accident occurred in the vicinity of the Mon Repos Primary School access road at around 11.38pm.
Preliminary investigations reveal that the motor car PAB 5454 was proceeding west along the southern driving lane on the southern carriageway. The vehicle was being driven by Randolph Hunte of Fort Ordnance, Berbice.
As the vehicle was approaching the traffic lights, Panday began to cross the road, and the wife of the driver shouted at him to “look!” and then he heard a loud impact to the front of the right side portion of his motor car.
Hunte told investigators that when the vehicle collided with Panday, she fell on the roadway with injuries about her body.
She was picked up in an unconscious condition and was rushed by ambulance to the Georgetown Public Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Her common-law husband, Azad Baksh, called ‘Bush’, who witnessed the accident yesterday afternoon told Stabroek News that everything is a blur to him.
He explained that he and Panday were at a stall in the Mon Repos Market talking and he was holding her hands. During the conversation she pulled away from him and went across the road. Baksh recounted that as she stepped on to the public road and was in the process of crossing, the vehicle struck her. He is not sure if the driver was speeding or not.
The distraught man noted that they were not arguing or having any confrontation prior to the accident. He said that it was the first time he was seeing her in five months as she had left to go to work in the interior as a cook.
“Around 7 she call and tell me she deh outside of the yard and I tell she I done in bed, but she tell me on the phone, ‘look out,’ and when I watch I see her standing out here… and we went out on the road… but like when the accident happen I just loss. I don’t know what happened, I still trying to remember how everything happen,” the man said.
The two were in a relationship for the past four years.
Baksh stated that the woman had a large amount of money in her possession but it has not been found.
Meanwhile, police said the breathalyzer test administered to the driver found zero trace of alcohol.
