14-year-old goes missing after road accident

Jul 10, 2008 News

A West Ruimveldt mother is desperately trying to locate her 14-year old son who disappeared on Tuesday after he was discharged from a city hospital where he was taken following an accident with a speeding car.
Jason Pilgrim was struck down by the car on Mandela Avenue near the East Bank Demerara junction at about midday on Tuesday.
His distraught mother, Sandrine Williams, is at her wits end as to his whereabouts. She told this newspaper that after learning about his accident, she contacted several city hospitals but was initially told that he had been to none of them. She eventually ended up at the Ruimveldt Police Station where she learnt that her son was indeed taken to a private hospital for treatment. However, he has not returned home and Williams is in fear for his life.
Speaking with this newspaper yesterday, Williams, a vendor, said that she had sent her son on an errand at about 13:30 hours.
At about three o’clock on the same day she received a message that he was involved in an accident.
“I went to Georgetown Hospital and I did not find him. I call the other hospitals and they said they had no name like my son. I went to Ruimveldt (police station) and made a report and they said they didn’t get no report about an accident,” Williams told this newspaper.
Yesterday morning she went to the scene of the accident where she was given an eyewitness account of what happened.
Williams learnt that her son was standing at the corner of the road when a car that was overtaking another vehicle slammed into him.
According to Williams, eyewitnesses related that the young man tried to get up but subsequently collapsed onto the roadway. He was picked up by the driver who indicated that he was taking the injured youth to the hospital. This newspaper managed to confirm yesterday that a private city hospital had treated Pilgrim and sent him away.
Williams said that the driver of the car who was eventually apprehended by the police, told investigators that after leaving the hospital, he placed the youth into a taxi and that was the last time he saw him. “He did not even contact the child’s parents after all of this and yet he saying that he put the child in a taxi. He couldn’t care less what happened to the youth,” a resident who witnessed the accident told this newspaper.
Williams lamented that the police approach to the matter leaves a lot to be desired.
According to the worried woman, the police never visited the accident while she was at the station for almost the whole of yesterday nor have they impounded the car.
The woman said that from all appearances, the driver of the car kept giving conflicting accounts of what happened to her son after he left the hospital.
She said that on one occasion, the driver said that the youth was placed into a taxi driven by a man sporting dreadlocks but yesterday another man showed up claiming that he was the driver of the taxi. According to reports, the taxi driver claimed that he had dropped the youth off on Mandela Avenue in the vicinity of his home. Up to late last night, the youth was still missing.

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