Baby dies in highway crash

A mother is left to mourn her 10-month-old baby after a horrific accident claimed his life and injured two others.

“My sister who lives in Long Creek up the highway wasn’t feeling well so she called me up and I hired a taxi and went with my baby,” Alana Hackett tearfully told Stabroek News yesterday. She said that she took a taxi from her Grove home on Sunday afternoon around 2.30 and was on her way to her sister’s residence with her son Aiden Anderson, when she saw her nephew Mohammed Ali, 26, of Bush Lot, at the junction of the East Bank Demerara road and Soesdyke-Linden highway. She said he inquired about her destination and she told him and he subsequently decided to take her there in the Toyota Tundra with licence plate GTT 5756 he was driving.

She said that when she got into the vehicle, another of her cousins was in the front seat and a third in the back seat with her.

“I jump in the back of the vehicle with my baby, and after we were on the highway I just feel the vehicle swaying and then it start to topple over and I blackout,” Hackett broke down in tears as she told Stabroek News that contrary to what was being circulated in the media, she and the baby were in the back seat and not the front seat. She said that after she regained consciousness she noticed that her baby was not next to her and she started to scream when she subsequently saw her nephew approaching her with her baby in his arms. The child was still.

She said she broke down in tears and started to plead for help until someone came along and took them to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre where the baby was pronounced dead on arrival. Ali is still admitted at the hospital and is currently in a stable condition.