TWO people are now dead following two separate accidents over the last two days, bringing the number of people killed in vehicular accidents to 159 for the year.
In the first case, Samdaye Chootkan was killed after she was knocked down by a van as she was making her way home from the Church of the Gathering in Arima, where she had attended the first day of the church’s prayer and fast week. The accident occurred around 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Chootkan, 64, had just stepped out of a maxi and was about to cross the Eastern Main Road in Valencia when she was hit. Chootkan, the mother of nine and grandmother of 22, lived alone at her KP Lands, Valencia home.
According to Chootkan’s daughter, Victoria, her mother was a loving and kind person. She complained that her mother was left like a dog at the side of the road after she was killed. The man who was driving the vehicle that killed her mother, told her family he was heading west when a vehicle in front of him pulled into the gas station, Victoria told the Express. The driver said he put the van in second gear after the vehicle in front him pulled into the gas station, and tried to ’pull brakes’ when he saw the elderly woman but could not do so in time. Chootkan said her mother might have seen her death coming as she contacted all her children the day before she died.
An autopsy revealed that Chootkan died as a result of internal injuries. The younger Chootkan told the Express that her mother suffered a broken neck, broken hip and other fractured bones.
About five hours after, 46-year-old Kishore Ramsaran, a mechanic of Stratham Lodge Street, Tunapuna, was killed instantly when his blue Charmant collided with another vehicle on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway around 12.30 a.m.
Police said Ramsaran was killed when Akash Rajcoomar, 29, of Freeman Road, St Augustine, lost control of his Nissan Frontier and crossed the median, slamming into Ramsaran’s vehicle. Rajcoomar, who was heading east, was taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, where he was said to be in a critical condition.
