Corentyne motorist succumbs following collision with horse

A Corentyne motorcyclist succumbed at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) on Monday afternoon while receiving medical attention for injuries he sustained after being involved in an accident with a horse.

The young man has been identified as Anthony Persaud of Lot 126 No.57 Village, Corentyne, Berbice.

Following an investigation into the accident, a police statement noted that speeding may have been a contributory factor in Persaud’s death after he collided with the horse on the No.58 Village public road on Sunday evening sometime around 9:21 PM.

Anthony Persaud
Anthony Persaud

Stabroek News understands that following the collision the motorist was thrown off a Jailing GY motorcycle and landed several feet away. It was reported that the horse ran away moments after the collision. Residents who heard the loud crashing noise rushed to the scene and offered assistance.

According to his sister, Mariana Persaud, 22, the family was made aware of the accident after a resident came to their home and informed them. “The person came and said a horse on 58 road and he crash into the horse with the bike and he fell off and he was unconscious.” When the family arrived on the scene Persaud was lying unresponsive on the road, while residents attempted to render assistance. An ambulance that happened to be proceeding south towards the Skeldon hospital was stopped, and Persaud was picked up and rushed to the said medical institution. He was later transferred to the New Amsterdam hospital for further attention.

The sister lamented that her brother’s condition started to deteriorate when he began to experience difficulty breathing on his own at which point oxygen was administered to him. As his condition continued to slowly weaken he was later transferred to the GPHC.

At the GPHC, she said the medical practitioners did not perform any emergency procedures but continued to administer oxygen and further disclosed that the doctors were preparing to conduct a computerized tomography (CT scan) on Monday morning to ascertain what internal injuries were sustained as a result of the accident, but did not go through with it. “They cancel it [the CT scan] and after that they kept going in and out of the room and were not telling us anything or allowed us to see him. Then around 3:30 -4 yesterday afternoon they take him off of the life support machine and not long after he died”, Mariana said sadly.

Persaud’s grieving sister lamented that the doctors told her family that it was too late for them to perform any surgery on him.

Mariana disclosed that when they arrived at the Skeldon Hospital the family had to spend a few hours waiting on an ambulance to arrive to transport her brother to the New Amsterdam Hospital. However when it was time to transfer her brother, they were then informed that the ambulance had no gas. An offer was made to purchase the gas but the hospital refused, stating that they had encountered “problems” before when they accepted such offers and also that the ambulance was new. The sister said as a result they were forced to wait on the arrival of an ambulance from the Port Mourant hospital before her brother could have been transferred.