Boy, 16, killed in Goed Fortuin accident

Mar 12, 2014 News

… Driver among three injured
A 16-year-old boy was killed and three of his friends are injured after the car in which they were traveling slammed into a utility pole on the Goed Fortuin Public Road, West Bank Demerara (WBD) around 04:00hrs yesterday.

The dead teen has been identified as Jamal Archer of 5 Pouderoyen, WBD.
Those injured are Anthony King, 14; Roy Khan, 17; and the driver, Kevin Lewis, 23, all from Pouderoyen.
King and Khan were treated at the WBD Regional Hospital and sent away while Lewis was treated and taken into police custody.
Kaieteur News was told that the car in which the four persons were travelling, was proceeding north along the West Bank Public Road when the driver lost control and the vehicle smashed into the pole, splitting it.
Eyewitnesses say that the occupants of the car were flung from the vehicle onto the roadway. Archer was sitting in the front passenger’s seat.
In a release, police said that investigations so far have revealed that the motor vehicle was proceeding along the roadway, allegedly at a fast rate when the driver lost control.
Yesterday, Archer’s grandmother, Rosaline Giddings said that the teen was out with some friends on Monday and had returned home around 23:00hrs.
“I was sleeping and he come home and he ask me if I buy mosquito coil because I had wash his net and I said no and then he left and he went out back, I don’t know if he left to buy the coil,” the grandmother said.

The driver of the car, Kevin Lewis

She explained that Archer and his 14-year-old brother, Junior Alexander along with their sister, Joanna Archer, 13, have been living with her since their mother passed away five years ago.
According to the woman, hours after her grandson left the house for the second time, she received a telephone call from a relative who informed her about the accident.
“I hear the police take the boys who could have walked to the hospital and left Jamal who was the most critical one,” the grandmother claimed.
The woman said that eyewitnesses to the accident told her and other family members that when the police got to the scene, they pronounced her grandson dead without taking him to the hospital.
“They are not doctors to pronounce him dead at the scene. They left him on the road for more than an hour!” Giddings stressed.
At the dead teen’s home yesterday, this newspaper was told by a relative that he was informed that a policeman said, “Lef’ him, he wanted anyway” while at the scene.
It is unclear if the 16-year-old was wanted by police but the grandmother was heard saying, “Yes he bad, but a wanted bulletin was never out for him.”
Giddings said that her grandson attended a secondary school in Vreed-en-Hoop and worked as a mechanic part-time.
Meanwhile, relatives of the injured men refused to speak to this publication.
Investigations are ongoing.