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Defective police vehicle crushes woman
Dead: Shantrinie Sookdeo
Sixty-eight-year-old Shantrinie Sookdeo, aka “Seerani” is now dead after a police vehicle slammed into her, smashing her lower body, as she was awaiting transportation to return home after visiting the Enmore market.
Reports are that the woman was standing on the road with her bag of groceries awaiting a minibus to travel to her residence located at the Cove and John Police Station Road, East Coast Demerara, when the police truck came “pelting down the East Coast road” and swerved into her direction.
It then hit the woman with such force that her feet were mangled and barely hanging onto her body. The police truck had crushed her against a lamp post close to where she was standing.
The vehicle then toppled several times and hit another woman, identified as Lucille Abrams, also from the East Coast. Abrams was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) having sustained serious injuries.
This publication understands that Abrams was complaining of stomach pain and her neck was in a brace.
One of Abrams’s friends who rushed at the hospital upon learning of the tragic news stated that her friends’ hands “looked badly chopped up”.
One of the police ranks who was in the vehicle when the accident occurred told this newspaper that he was “asleep” when the incident took place. All he was told is that the police vehicle tried to swerve from another vehicle thus resulting in the accident.
Another said that the vehicle had defective brakes that required the driver to pump it three or four times before there could be any result.
When Kaieteur News arrived at the GPHC the sister of the deceased, Basanti Harriprashad of the Enmore Village, ECD, was at a loss for words. She was comforted by relatives and patients in the hospital compound as she broke down into tears and slumped to the concrete floor.
Harriprashad explained that she was at home when she received a telephone call alerting her that her sister was involved in an accident and was dead. Two of her son’s friends immediately assisted her in getting to the spot where Sookdeo’s dead body lay and then to the GPHC.
The distraught woman was at a loss for words when she tried to describe the accident scene.
“I see her and thought it was her head looking so smashed up…but it was her legs! Both of them smash up, the flesh barely hanging on. I carry her bag home. Somebody gave me her handbag”
Some persons who passed the scene suggested that the police vehicle was speeding down the East Coast Demerara public road.
One source told Kaieteur News that the driver of the police vehicle, who was identified as Mark Jones received bruises on his face.
Sattie Persaud, another of Sookdeo’s sisters, explained to Kaieteur News that her sister frequented the Enmore market every Friday.
“Me sister ah nah ah walk ah road top and de police vehicle wrong” said Persaud.
Villagers in the area who knew Sookdeo well confirmed that she would always walk in the corner of the road and has been doing so for 30 years.
According to Persaud the last time she saw her sister was minutes before she left for Georgetown yesterday morning. When Persaud returned home her sister was not there since she had gone about on her “usual Friday market activity”.
A short while later, one of her neighbours arrived at her home and shouted “Come quick! Come quick! I don’t know how yuh gun tek this. Yuh sister just get in an accident!”
Persaud said that when she heard this, she telephoned Sookdeo’s daughter who resides in Berbice, to notify her of the sad news concerning her mother.
At the scene the police vehicle was overturned in a nearby drain. The lamp post which it slammed into was leaning precariously while the items Persaud had purchased from the market lay scattered along the road.
Sookdeo leaves to mourn her one daughter and four sons along with her two sisters and two brothers.
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