Two friends are dead and a third missing after the car they were travelling in toppled several times and plunged into a trench at Canal Number 2 Polder, West Bank Demerara around 12.30 am yesterday.
The bodies of Premraj ‘Kevin’ Bhola, 19, and Aleem Suloman, 19, of Belle West Scheme were discovered when the white wagon, PRR 2932 was pulled out of the trench around 7 am. Ganesh Sewcharran, 20, who was said to have been driving the vehicle had not been found up to press time last night.
Reports are that Sewcharran, also of Belle West, stole the car that his stepfather had rented and took his friends out for a drive after a drinking spree earlier in the village. The car was apparently headed in the direction of Georgetown.
A resident, George Welcome, said he heard a loud impact and when he and other residents ran out they did see anything.
“We know it was a vehicle, but we didn’t know what kind. It was already in the trench and the water was very high [so it covered the car],” Welcome said.
Early yesterday morning they went back to the scene and saw the car because the water level had dropped a bit.
A tractor subsequently came and pulled the car out of the trench. It was then that the residents discovered Sulomon’s body, which had been flung from the backseat to the middle of the front seats and Bhola’s body in the front passenger’s seat.
Bhola’s father, Nandkishorelall ‘Max’ Seeraj, 54, said his son usually slept with his grandmother in the lower flat and he was not aware that he was not at home.
“About 7 o’clock a car man come and tell me that my son was in an accident at Stanleytown and he drowned,” the man recalled. When he arrived at the scene he saw his son’s body on the parapet.
His sister, Priya, told this newspaper that her brother would normally hang out late with his friends in the village. She said her mother told her that he had gone home around 11 pm to get his ID card, but she refused to give it to him. He apparently wanted to go to clubbing and his mother did not approve of it, she said.
“I can’t believe my brother is dead,” Priya lamented. “He did his wrong things, but still, apart from that he was a very quiet and helpful person.”
She said when the man went to tell them about the accident she thought he was “bringing [a] complaint [against her brother]…”
Suloman’s mother Salome said they had all attended a family party at Anna Catherina earlier and when they got home around 9 pm he told her he was going out again.
She did not stop him because he was “recently in a problem and was locked-up and couldn’t go anywhere…” Later his stepfather saw him “drinking in a shop with Ganesh and he ask he if he was not going home and he said yes, just now.”
Around 11.46 pm, she said, she called his cell phone and he again said he was “coming just now.” She fell asleep and did not realize that he never returned home.
The following morning when she was taking her daughter to school she called his phone again and got his voice message.
She was planning to contact his friends to enquire of his whereabouts when she received a call that he was dead and started screaming.
She had not heard about the accident and it was not until she went over to her sister’s house that she learnt from her son-in-law, Chris, that Suloman was involved in an accident.
Chris had told this newspaper that he was passing the scene when the taxi driver stopped the car and asked him if he recognized the victims.
Police said in a release that they are conducting investigations into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Bhola and Suloman.
