Grieving for almost 20 years… “When a drunk driver took my children’s lives, he took mine”

Aug 22, 2016 News

Almost every time she opens the newspaper, she reads about the death of someone on the country’s roadway, and, too often, that victim died under the wheels of a drunk driver’s car.
For this very reason, Lucille Bacchus has stopped buying newspapers. You see, Bacchus lost her only two children almost 20 years ago and the deaths of innocent children remind her of the day she lost her son and daughter.
They were 17 and 16 at the time they were killed by a drunk driver. They would have been 37 and 36 now and would have had children of their own.
On November 16th 1996, Wallie Bacchus’s life ended at the age of 17, while 10 days later his 16-year-old sister, Fareena Bacchus, succumbed to her injuries.
Recalling the events of that fateful day, Mrs. Bacchus said her children had gone to a friend’s residence in Enmore, East Coast Demerara, to collect a book, and were returning to their Lusignan home, when the driver of a speeding car overtook a parked vehicle and sideswiped two persons on a motorcycle, before hitting the siblings. Wallie and Fareena were also on a motorcycle.
Mrs. Bacchus explained that at the time of the accident, which occurred at approximately 08:40 hours, she had just closed the family shop and was about to relax when a neighbour approached her and asked about the whereabouts of her children.
She responded that they would return shortly.
“If someone had told me that my children would not return home I would have never let them out of the house,” the emotional mom said, as she removed her spectacles to wipe away tears.
Wallie, she recalled, was fully conscious when she visited him at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital, and had even recounted the entire tragedy for his mother, but shocked everyone when he succumbed at around 14:30 hrs the same day.

Lucille Bacchus with her daughter’s dolls. The clock nearby shows the exact time that a drunken driver struck down her children.

Wallie and Fareena

According to the post mortem report, the teenager died of multiple internal injuries, which included a broken pelvis, damaged liver and spleen and severed intestines.
Lucille Bacchus still clung to hope that maybe she would still be able to take home Fareena, who had been unconscious from the time she was thrown from the motorcycle. But this was not to be. Fareena died from kidney failure on November 26, 1996—two days after undergoing brain surgery in Trinidad.
Unlike many relatives of accident victims, who after some years, manage to move on with their lives—Lucille Bacchus has clung onto the memories of her children and has been unable to move on.
According to the still grieving woman, the driver of the vehicle, who it was concluded had been drunk at the time of the accident, was released after spending only 16 months of a three-year sentence imposed on him on January 21, 1999.
“When that driver took my children lives, he took mine,” the mother said with tears running down her cheeks.
After Wallie and Fareena’s death, Bacchus often considered suicide.
“But I realized that I had my parents and if I can’t live without my children, how will they live without me,” she explained.
She went into depression for a brief period during which her husband walked out on her, leaving her to deal with the loss of her children on her own. He died three years later.
And, although she once considered adopting, she never went through with it out of fear of losing another child.
“I am scared to love again. The feeling of losing a loved one is difficult.”
When she is having a hard day, she would visit Wallie and Fareena’s graves which are located just a stone’s throw from her home. Sometimes, she sits there for hours and talks to them and would only return home when she feels a little relief.
Every Christmas, she would buy a little toy for her children and put it in their room. “She likes toys so every time I go somewhere and I see something that I know she will like, I buy it for her and put it in her room.”
Over the years, Mrs. Bacchus has used her loss as a driving force to help many others who have experienced similar circumstances.
Being a founding member of the Mothers In Black Organization and member of the Guyana National Road Safety Council, she has made significant contributions towards the implementation of strategies to help minimize road carnage.
Mrs. Bacchus along with other members, has been able to render support to the families of accident victims in more ways than one. From moral support, to being a listening ear at nights, to walking up the Magistrates’ Court’s steps, Mrs. Bacchus has given herself totally over to fighting for a cause.
Also, being a part of the National Road Safety Council, Mrs. Bacchus and her group have lobbied successfully for the implementation of the breathalyzer test, the use of seatbelts and the use of radar guns by traffic ranks.
However, she still feels that more can be done in terms of dealing with some of the root causes of road fatalities.
She believes that focus should be placed on drinking spots which are often filled, with cars parked in close proximity.
Bacchus said that persons at drinking spots are highly likely to be the very ones behind the steering wheels when the heart rending headlines are made.
“At every single drinking spot, on any given night, you can find persons consuming large amounts of alcohol and then shortly after heading into vehicles not only as passengers, but as drivers, heading to various destinations.”
Having lost her children to a drunken driver, this is a burning issue on which she has very strong views. Further, she stresses that she does not feel the current penalties are sufficient for persons found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.