A Grade Six student of Soesdyke Primary School is currently battling for her life at a city hospital after she was struck down by a car while using a pedestrian crossing at Grove, East Bank Demerara Public (EBD) Road on Tuesday afternoon.
Critically injured is Adalia George, 11, of Kaneville, Grove, EBD.
Stabroek News learned that the accident occurred around 3.55 pm while George and two of her siblings were making their way across the public road using a pedestrian crossing.
They were returning home after school and had just disembarked a minibus.
The accident was recorded by a nearby surveillance camera and circulated on Facebook.
In the 13-second video seen by this newspaper, George and her two siblings were seen crossing the road together.
As a car waited at the pedestrian crossing for the children to cross the road, another car, which appeared to be heavily tinted, appeared and struck George. She was hit into the air and fell onto the roadway.
George’s siblings were then seen rushing to her assistance.
Allison Arthur, the injured child’s mother and also a teacher at the Soesdyke Primary School, told Stabroek News that she and the three children would usually travel to and from home on a daily basis.
However, Arthur said she took the day off on Tuesday to transact business in Georgetown.
“I sent them off…I didn’t go to work because I had to go on the wharf to look after some family business and I asked for the time to go and look after that…they are big children, they know to travel, I teach them about the pedestrian crossing,” Arthur noted.
She said her older daughter related to her that at the time of the accident Adalia was a short distance ahead of them since she had told them that she wanted to get home quickly.
“My daughter told me that they were almost together walking to go over, almost, close and she said that Adalia walked up a little faster because she said that she wanted to get home quickly,” Arthur related.
The woman expressed frustration at the manner in which the accident occurred, while noting that her children do not play on the road and that she ensured that she educated them about how to use the roadways safely.
“We believe that the pedestrian [crossing] is safe. You teach your children that… I am telling you about what we teach the children at school, so they accustomed to it. So she just briskly hurrying home—remember you can’t crawl going over there, vehicles waiting—and so happen that my big daughter told me that she stepped up a little bit, a little brisk to go ahead of them a little and not by much and this car just picked her up and my daughter said she felt the vibration because she said she barely make a thing back, because little more she would have gotten hit and the brother was right next to her,” Arthur explained.
She said she and her other son were at home when they received a call notifying them that they needed to go to the hospital.
“Their (the children) stepmother called my son phone and told my son that we have to come to the hospital. They didn’t tell me why. I just hastily ran down there and I saw the police there, about four police and the crowd and when I went in there I saw my daughter bleeding and they were working on her,” Arthur added.
She said since Adalia’s admission, doctors have been trying their best. “Right now she is there, in and out of consciousness, screaming, hallucinating, talking things that are not real. Sometimes she is making sense, sometimes she is not,” Arthur said.
The accident has since been reported to the police and the driver is said to be in custody assisting with the investigation.
