‘Death strip’ claims another life in Trinidad

(Trinidad Guardian) When Kyle Ja­groop went to the in­fa­mous Debe death strip where his neigh­bour Nicholas Coon had sur­vived a car ac­ci­dent, he was un­aware that the body still trapped in the wreck was his fa­ther Prem­c­hand Ja­groop.

It was a shock that both Kyle and his un­cle Naresh suf­fered when Ja­groop’s body was tak­en out of Coon’s man­gled Nis­san Sun­ny B15 on Sun­day night. A re­port stat­ed that around 6 pm, Ja­groop, 46 and Coon, 48 were dri­ving along the M2 Ring Road. Coon was the dri­ver and Ja­groop was sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger seat when on reach­ing light pole 114, a black Nis­san Primera, dri­ven by a 25-year-old San Fer­nan­do man, trav­el­ling in the op­po­site di­rec­tion swerved in­to their path­way.

It led to a head-on col­li­sion, with most of the im­pact crush­ing Ja­groop in his seat. Both dri­vers were able to get out of their cars de­spite suf­fer­ing se­ri­ous in­juries and were both tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Ja­groop was pro­nounced dead on the scene by Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Nar­i­nesingh.

At their Ste Madeleine home yes­ter­day, Ja­groop’s broth­er Lochan said that the fa­ther of one was a part-time labour­er. On Sun­day morn­ing, Coon called Ja­groop’s for a day’s work and they went to Siparia to in­stall glass on win­dows. Lochan said they were just eight min­utes away when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred.

“We were home when my last broth­er got a call from an­oth­er neigh­bour, say­ing that our neigh­bour (Coon) got in­to an ac­ci­dent. My broth­er Naresh went down to the area to see what was go­ing. He did not know his broth­er was in the car. He met the neigh­bour and asked who was in the car be­cause the way he (Ja­groop) was fold-up, he didn’t make him out,” Lochan said.

Kyle told Guardian Me­dia that he was aware of how many ve­hi­cles have crashed along the stretch of road where his fa­ther was killed. How­ev­er, he be­lieved that im­prop­er dri­ving was to blame. In 2017 the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port had milled the cor­ners of the road and added rum­ble strips to in­crease the trac­tion. Ad­di­tion sig­nage to added near the dan­ger­ous curves as sev­er­al fa­tal ac­ci­dents and nu­mer­ous col­li­sions have oc­curred along the strip. How­ev­er, ac­ci­dents con­tin­ue.