Killed like a dog on the roadway…Drivers in three hit and run deaths still at large

May 01, 2017 News

Rawle Mohan was driving along the East Bank of Demerara public road near the community of Farm, when he saw a crowd standing around the body of a pedal cyclist, who lay on the western parapet. Curious to see who the victim might be, Mohan stopped and went to the crowd.
He was shocked to find himself staring at the body of his own brother, 36-year-old Rory Mohan, who was struck down while riding home.
Relatives said that Rory Mohan had spent most of his time at Howes Street, Charlestown, caring for his ailing mother. However, he would also ride daily to Grove, East Bank Demerara, to check on a family property and feed the dogs. Relatives had last seen him when he left Howes Street on his bicycle for Grove.
Police found the victim’s bicycle at the scene. They also found a trafficator and a side-view mirror, which a police official said may have come from a Canter truck or pickup.
But police failed to track down the vehicle or the driver. Nine years later, they still haven’t done so.

Kaishrie Persaud

Rory Mohan

Corneille Grimmond

“Every time I think of him lying in that corner it is really upsetting,” the victim’s brother had told Kaieteur News. Every time I have to pass the spot it brings back fresh memories…it is like a nightmare.
“These people have no feelings. They could have taken him to the hospital, but they left him on the road like a dead dog.”
The hit-and–run driver in the Rory Mohan case is just one of three who have never been caught.
It was shortly before ten o’clock on the night of Tuesday, July 26, 2011, that Terry Singh’s wife, 26-year-old Kaishrie Persaud, called Nanda, asked her husband to look at the couple’s nine-month-old daughter, and their other two girls, aged eight and six.
Nanda explained that she was following her 16-year-old neighbour, Tricia De Freitas, to a shop near her Lot 10, Crane Old Road, West Coast Demerara home to buy a phone card.
They didn’t get the card. Accompanied by a male resident, Nanda and her teenage neighbor were walking along the West Coast Demerara Public Road, some five minutes from home. That was when the vehicle struck them.
Tricia De Freitas was flung into a nearby ditch, but it was Nanda Persaud who bore the full impact.

Missing their mom: Kaishrie Persaud’s three children; from left, Shalini, Garima and Jhasoda

Terry Singh got the news from a friend, and when he reached the scene, he saw the injured Tricia De Freitas in a car. The male friend who had accompanied them “was screaming,” he recalled. His injured wife was at the West Demerara Regional Hospital.
He assumed that, at worst, Nanda had suffered “a couple of broken bones.” But one look at Nanda in the Accident and Emergency told him that it was much, much worse.
“When I went into Accident and Emergency I saw her lying motionless. They told me to wait outside, because they were trying to attend to her but I knew that she was dead,” Singh had told Kaieteur News. After I went back in they told me that she hadn’t made it.”
Sixteen-year-old Tricia De Freitas escaped with minor injuries.
WOMAN DRIVER?
From reports relayed to the grieving husband, the trio was about to enter Crane Housing Scheme when a dark-coloured vehicle, similar to an SUV, and heading east, had swerved onto the northern parapet on the West Coast Demerara roadway.
The vehicle struck Nanda and Tricia, ‘rode over’ a heap of sand before continuing east along the West Coast Demerara Public Road.
Some three weeks later, a close friend of Terry Singh’s provided him with more information about the mystery driver.
“He said that it was hard to face me before because he had assisted at the accident scene. He said that he was going into a restaurant when he heard a loud sound.
“He came back out and a vehicle passed him with a woman and two kids inside, and they (the children) were screaming.”
From the friend’s description, the vehicle was similar to an enclosed SUV “with a (spare) wheel at the back.”
Some reports, confirmed by a senior police official, suggested that the driver was a woman in the legal profession. Thinking that the hit-and–run driver might have crossed the Demerara Harbour Bridge, a friend of Terry Singh’s checked the closed circuit television images at the bridge for vehicles that had passed at the time of the accident.
He found nothing.
Initially, Singh had hoped that police would have tracked down the driver, or that the culprit would have had an attack of conscience and come to him.
“If they (the driver) had come and said ‘it was an accident, I’m sorry, I would have understood. I had expected that as a human being they would have said ‘it was me, I’m sorry.”
But as days passed and the driver remained unknown, Singh’s anger and frustration grew.
And he wasn’t convinced that police did as much as they could to track down the driver. Rumors that some investigators may have known the individual only added to his frustration.
“I was close to being crazy,” he confessed.
“Whenever I see a (similar) dark-coloured vehicle, I would say ‘what if that is the vehicle?’
“I’m trying to put it behind me, but I think I need confrontation (with the culprit). That person is heartless; knowing that I had a nine-month-old child and they did not even try to contact me, just to say ‘sorry’. I don’t need money. I need an explanation as to what took place.”
And even though the older girls were only seven and eight at the time, he believes that they were just as emotionally affected, and, like him, are still to get over their loss.
“Everything just brings it back. It’s hard; every time I look at my kids, it’s hard. She was a good mother to them.”
KILLED ON A SUNDAY NIGHT
On Sunday, April 9, 2017, a driver found 23-year-old Corneille Grimmond, of Lot 6 Happy Acres, East Coast Demerara, lying almost lifeless with multiple injuries, consistent with that of a motor vehicular accident, on the Happy Acres Public Road.
With assistance from two of his passengers, and ranks from a Professional Guard Service vehicle, the driver rushed Grimmond to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Investigators reportedly retrieved several pieces of a broken vehicle mirror at the scene. While reports indicate that the victim may have been struck by a minibus, police are still to locate the culprit.
“It is painful and heartbreaking that someone would do something like this and not be convicted,” a relative of Grimmond’s said yesterday.
“But we have our faith based in Christ, and we believe that everything will work out.”
One source suggested that an all-stations alert for ranks to check at bodywork establishments to ascertain if drivers had brought in vehicles for repairs shortly after the accident.
Former ‘C’ Division Commander, Marlon Chapman has appealed to the public to help identify the driver.
Stating that “a life had been lost,” Chapman said that he is seeking assistance from “anyone with information that can lead to an arrest.”
He said what has made the investigation difficult is that no one has reported seeing the driver, and police found nothing at the scene that would allow them to identify the vehicle.
Kaieteur News is appealing to anyone with information on the identity of the drivers in these cases to contact the police.
They can also contact Michael Jordan(without disclosing their identity) at Kaieteur News on 22-58465; 22-58473, or 645-2447.

1 thoughts on “Killed like a dog on the roadway…Drivers in three hit and run deaths still at large”

yuhbackside May 1, 2017 at 8:40 pm

So sad!

I can’t fathom how people can be so heartless.

Breaks my heart for those grieving relatives, especially those 3 beautiful little girls now growing up without their mother.

Sigh…..