A 45-year-old man was struck down on Sunday evening by a speeding minibus as he was making his way across the Friendship Public Road, East Bank Demerara. The man had just left his work place for a few minutes to buy cigarettes when the Route 42 bus, BPP 514, moving north, slammed into him.
Tolaram Narine, known as ‘Campo’ was pronounced dead on arrival at the Diamond Hospital. He was rushed to the hospital by the driver of the minibus. Narine sustained haemorrhaging to the head and his neck was fractured.
When Stabroek News visited the relatives of the dead man they were preparing for the evening wake. Narine’s brother, Permanand, said that on Sunday afternoon his brother had gotten a job offer as a security guard for Lall’s Auto Sales in Friendship. “Lall son come and ask him if he want a job and he said yes. So he left the same afternoon. It was his first job since he come out of the bush,” the man said, mentioning that around 7 pm Narine told another guard who was on duty with him that he was going across the road to purchase a pack of cigarettes.
“He said that he see my brother coming back over the road from the shop and then suddenly a bus knock he down. He said that the bus was speeding,” Permanand related.
Another relative who is a minibus conductor said that when they went to the police station in Grove the driver approached him and started talking to him. “He know me from the park but he didn’t know that I was related to Campo.
He told me that he get in lil problem that he knock down a man,” the relative related.
He said the driver went on to say that the minibus had been hired to take a group of people to a creek on the highway.
He said the driver told him that he and everyone drank and they were returning to the city when the accident occurred. “But he stop talk when I tell he that I is a relative. He ask to meet with Campo mother and other relatives to settle the matter….,” the relative said adding that the driver was still in police custody.
“My nephew was a good man. He never get in problem with nobody. He don’t drink too much and he generous,” Narine’s aunt told this newspaper.
