Tobago 5-year-old still in coma

FIVE-YEAR-OLD Zakiah Lorde is still in a coma, but her family remains hopeful she will awake and resume her life as normal.

On Friday, the family as well as friends and staff gathered at the chapel of the Scarborough General Hospital to hold a candlelight watch and prayer session for her.

Tragedy befell Zakiah, a first-year pupil at the Black Rock Government Primary School, on Wednesday, when three workmen were trimming a tree at the front of her house on Hopeton Road, Black Rock. A branch fell on her as she was leaving for school, just after 8am.

Speaking to Newsday Tobago at the hospital chapel, one family member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the family remains optimistic she will improve.

“Zakiah Esther Lorde is still in the coma. At this point we are just sitting waiting, but at the same time praying and hoping for the best. God is in control at this time, he knows our position and understands our pain and if Zakiah lives we say, thank God. If she passes, we still say thank God, because at the end of the day God is at the helm and he is in charge, he knows best,” he said. He said since the tragedy on Wednesday, it has not been possible to take Zakiah for treatment in Trinidad because she was in a coma. .

“The helicopters came about three times, but as family, we were advised that Zakiah is classified as unstable, and they do not fly out unstable patients.

“But even as she remains here, the doctors and nurses are by her side the majority of the time, a deed which we are indeed grateful for,” he said.

Zakiah’s grandmother Claudia Phillips said: “This is emotional, the pain I feel at this time. I am barely able to come to terms with the death of my son, Zaki (Zakiya’s father). Now this. If this is to get any worse I don’t know how I would cope, I don’t know what will happen, because this child is the exact replica of her father and this is the closest I have to him at this point in time.”

The Division of Infrastructure, Quarries and the Environment, in a press release on Thursday, expressed its management’s deep regret over the incident.