Trinidad man dies in crash one week after buying SUV

Reon Ragoobir
Reon Ragoobir

(Trinidad Guardian) Just a week af­ter pur­chas­ing a sports util­i­ty ve­hi­cle, Re­on Ra­goobir lost his life af­ter he was thrown from the van dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing ac­ci­dent near Gas­par­il­lo yes­ter­day.

Ra­goobir, 31, a small ceil­ing con­trac­tor of Cipero Road, Friend­ship Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, died on the scene. He was the on­ly per­son in the ve­hi­cle.

Po­lice said short­ly af­ter 12 am, Ra­boobir was head­ing south along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way when he lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle, which ran off the road and crashed. His fa­ther-in-law To­ta Har­richa­ran, a re­tired po­lice in­spec­tor, said Ra­goobir left home around 8 pm to go to Cou­va to vis­it his friends. He was orig­i­nal­ly from Mil­ton Vil­lage, Cou­va, where he lived with his par­ents. He mar­ried Har­richa­ran’s daugh­ter Ria Har­richa­ran-Ra­goobir four years ago and moved in with his in-laws. They have a four-year-old daugh­ter.

At around 12:15 a.m. Reon Ragoobir was heading south when in the vicinity of the Gasparillo overpass, his vehicle spun, overturned and hit the median on the south bound lane of the highway

Har­richa­ran re­called, “About 12.30 this morn­ing we get a call from the po­lice, in fact, my daugh­ter got a call from the po­lice, she woke me up and we went up on the high­way. He was ac­tu­al­ly ly­ing on the road­way still. What we heard is that he was dri­ving down the road and the car flip about three times and he fly out on­to the road­way.”

Haricha­ran said his son-in-law was not a heavy drinker.

“He used to take a drink, one drink, but no set of heavy drink­ing. He was a re­spon­si­ble man.” He said the ve­hi­cle was not brand new but it was in good con­di­tion.

“He on­ly buy that van last week. He ac­cus­tomed dri­ving that van all over the place.”

De­scrib­ing Ra­goobir as a hard­work­ing and qui­et per­son, Har­richa­ran said he was look­ing for­ward to cel­e­brat­ing his child’s birth­day on May 29.

“Things were planned al­ready, they go­ing to have a lil boun­cy cas­tle, a ma­gi­cian, food, cake right here.”

Har­richa­ran said his daugh­ter, a nurse, had gone to the mor­tu­ary at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to try to or­gan­ise the pa­per­work ear­ly so they could plan for the fu­ner­al. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.