IF Prakash Sookbir and wife Michelle Ramdin were wearing seatbelts when their vehicle hit a steel light pole on Tuesday night, they may still be alive today.

The couple, married for four years, were killed in a crash on the SS Erin Road in Penal.

They were parents of four-year-old daughter, Shivanni, who was staying with an aunt at the time of the accident.

Winston Sukhbir, father of 25 year-old Prakash, said the couple were not wearing seatbelts.

"If they were wearing seatbelts they may have been alive today. At least the girl. She fly straight through the windscreen. Her whole body was twist up. She got a big hole behind her ear and straight across her forehead she had a big cut," he told the Express yesterday.

Sukhbir said his son may have also been speeding.

"From my experience in driving, it looked though like a man was heading south, but he was taking up the whole road and my son like he swerved to avoid hitting him and he lost control of the vehicle and slammed straight into a light pole. Or he may have been overtaking someone, but he had to be driving hard for something so big to happen."

He said the couple left their home at Chester Street, Debe, at 1 p.m. Independence Day to attend a nearby car show with their daughter. They returned later that evening to drop the child off with an aunt who lived nearby. They then returned to the car show.

Sukhbir said, "I hear they was at the car show and then I don't know where they went liming. Some say they went by a bar and when they left there they went by another bar near to Big Apple. Some say they had an argument with a lady there and that is why they left."

He said the couple were returning home in a two-door pick up van when the accident took place.

Sukhbir said his son was alive but was squeezed in the vehicle, where he suffocated and died.

"Some people say my son was alive and he hung on to the window and he was calling 'Michelle, Michelle.' People pass and saw what was going on and none of them stopped to help him. He died with half of his body in the van and half hanging out."

Sukhbir said the ambulance that arrived more than an hour later could have saved the life of his son.

"The ambulance came a good while after. My son could have been saved if they was on time because he was still breathing."

Officers from the Debe Police Station did not have an official vehicle and visited the scene in an officer's private vehicle, Sukhbir said.

The couple was described by Sukhbir as "one of the best".

"Everywhere they went they always together. They went to primary school together, they went to junior secondary together and they were friends and when they grow up they got married. You couldn't find a better couple than them."

Shivanni is unaware of the incident.

"Right now she don't know what going on. She just know her parents went to lime and they haven't come back as yet." The autopsies are expected to be done today at the mortuary of the San Fernando General Hospital.