Child injured in highway crash battling for life

Akeem Hinds, the 5-year-old boy who was on Saturday night involved in an accident at Moblissa on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway is still battling for his life with the aid of a life support machine in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Latoya Hinds, the boy’s mother, with whom this newspaper spoke, remains hopeful that her son will soon regain full consciousness.

The child, who was returning to Linden from a funeral with relatives sustained a gaping wound to the head as a result of the accident. Meanwhile 61-year-old Leon Yaw of 1st Forest Alley, Wismar, Linden, died shortly after motor car PJJ 356, driven by his nephew Wendell Yaw, slammed into a “parked bush truck” and flipped into a gully off the Linden-Soesdyke Highway at Moblissa.

According to reports, they were returning home from a funeral in Georgetown, when the vehicle slammed into the side of a stationary truck without its park lights on.

A shaken Wendell Yaw, 54, of Wismar Housing Scheme, Linden had said that he was driving along in the vicinity of the Moblissa Bridge area when he “came across a truck” parked without its lights on along the side of the highway. He said that by the time he noticed the truck “it was too late” and he couldn’t do much. Wendell’s wife Paulette was sitting beside him in the front passenger seat while the deceased, his brother and wife Colette, 39, along with Hinds were in the backseat.

After the car came to a halt, Wendell recalled, he immediately slipped from behind the wheel and checked to see if his relatives were alright. The man said he called out and asked if they were all fine and everyone, but Leon, responded. It wasn’t until Wendell managed to turn on the car’s internal light that they discovered Leon motionless and there was a gaping wound in the child’s head. He and the other survivors grabbed Hinds and climbed out of the gully. They stopped a minibus which transported them to the Linden Hospital. Paulette, Colette, the driver and Leon’s brother sustained minor injuries.