By Melissa Charles
A 43-year-old man died while his friend suffered injuries in an early morning accident yesterday involving a bus and a motor bike at Covent Garden, East Bank Demerara.
Owen Adolph of 30 Middle Street, McDoom, East Bank Demerara was attached to a life support machine in the High Dependency Unit (HDU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) for several hours yesterday before he died just after 2 pm. Leroy Nedd, 41, of 39 Half Mile, Wismar, Linden was up to last evening still receiving treatment at the hospital.
Adolph was the pillion rider on the motorcycle that Nedd was riding at the time of the collision with the bus.
The circumstances of the accident are not clear and the driver of the bus escaped from the accident scene.
Residents living along the Covent Garden Public Road in the vicinity of where the accident occurred could not give an eyewitness account of the circumstances surrounding the accident since they were asleep or indoors at the time. However some of them related that upon hearing the loud impact some minutes before 5 am they ventured outside. One woman said that when she came out the bus was in the trench while the two men had been flung to the opposite side of the road. She said that they didn’t appear to be breathing.
The resident said that she noticed two men coming out of the bus in the trench after which they flagged down another minibus and left the scene. The police then arrived and proceeded to take the injured men to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre. The men were later transferred to the GPHC.
Relatives of both men converged at the hospital yesterday morning. Adolph’s son Deon Adolph said that his father might have been heading home.
Some relatives were heard speculating on the speed at which the bus must have been travelling for Adolph to sustain the kinds of injuries he did.
When Stabroek News visited the scene of the accident, mud stains were visible on the road from where the bus was pulled out of the trench and pieces of broken glass were scattered across the road close to where the men were flung. Blood stains were also evident.
There has been a spate of fatal accidents recently. The most recent fatality on Saturday took the life of Lindon Phillips of 38 Friendship, East Coast Demerara, while his wife, daughter, sister-in-law and her daughter were seriously injured. Phillips had reportedly lost control of his car on the Linden-Soesdyke highway while the family was returning from a funeral.
A horrific smash-up involving a car and a pick-up on the Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara public road on the night of July 6 saw the death of five. Brothers 20-year-old Jason and 17-year-old Julian Martin, 19-year-old Colin Fredericks of Plaisance, 16-year-old Ezra Ferguson, and 25-year-old Royston Dempster of Better Hope, East Coast Demerara all died. The friends had gone to a creek on the highway for the afternoon and were returning home when the accident occurred around 8 pm.
Three pedestrians were also involved in the accident and 10-year-old Priya Ali is still a patient of the GPHC.
Another motorcycle crash – this time at Uitvlugt, West Bank Demerara – saw the death of two. Police Constable Dexter Henry of Lot 42, De Kinderen Housing Scheme, WBD, who was reportedly rushing home after running an errand and Joann Leitch called `Tolly’ of Lot 15 Uitvlugt both died. Henry collided with Leitch. At West Berbice, a 14-year-old student of a private secondary school at Bath, New Housing Scheme, died after he was struck by a car around 12:30 pm yesterday on June 19 on the Bath Settlement Public Road.
And on the evening of March 28 three persons died after a truck driver reportedly swerved to avoid hitting some cattle on the Bee Hive public road colliding with a Mahaica minibus instead. As result of the impact bus driver Desmond Datterdeen died on the spot after his skull was smashed in while school teacher Marisa Assaye and canteen operator Mohammed Akbar Mohammed died en route to the hospital. Thirteen other persons were injured.
