COVERED IN BLOOD

GRANDFATHER Ramcharita Ramnarine, 61, wept when he saw his 11-year-old granddaughter after an accident with her uniform covered in blood. “I saw my little girl on the road. Her school uniform was all bloody,” a tearful Ramnarine told Newsday.

Devie Samaroo was knocked unconscious when the car she was in crashed into a dump truck along the Rochard Douglas Road in Barrackpore yesterday morning. Samaroo, a form one student of Barrackpore West Secondary was on her way to school with her aunt Lindy Singh.

Medical sources said the child has a fractured skull and is in critical condition at San Fernando General Hospital. Her mother was there with her. Samaroo’s aunt has injuries to her head and right leg and is in a serious but stable condition.

The truck driver escaped without any injuries. Police said Singh was driving a Ford Laser hatchback, at around 7.30 am, near Ramlal Trace, when she tried to overtake a dump truck but crashed head-on into another dump truck driving in the opposite direction.

Samaroo was in the front seat. Residents of Ramlal Trace and passers-by went to help and took the woman and child out of the car while they waited for an ambulance. Ramnarine said, “I was at home when a neighbour came running inside the house, telling me that my daughter and granddaughter just got in an accident.

“I could not believe what I was hearing. I felt my head spinning. I rushed in the car and drove to the scene. I was praying it was just a little accident. But when I saw my little girl on the ground there, blood on her head. I just broke down.”

Wiping his tears, the grandfather of ten said he felt he was going to collapse. He recalled people on the scene holding him.

“My daughter was also bleeding, but she was standing, and my granddaughter was on the ground with her school uniform still on, and in blood. She was not moving. I could not stop crying.

“I just wanted to hold my granddaughter. I watched as they took her away in the ambulance. I was just praying. I just want her to be okay. I close my eyes and I still see the image of her on the road. I am just praying right now. Oh gosh, why did this have to happen? She was just going to school. This is not the news I was expecting to hear, ever.”

Ramnarine said on mornings his daughter would usually drop her niece to school and then pick her back up in the evening.

“I don’t know how I am going to sleep tonight knowing that they are in the hospital. I just want them to be safe. I love all my children and grandchildren so much.”

Police have recorded statements from the drivers of the dump trucks. The trucks and the car are at the Barrackpore police station.

Earlier this month, two women died in an accident involving a deluxe coach bus, a dump truck and bottled-water delivery truck. Tara Baboolal, 66, of Debe, and Judy Clarke, 61, of Diego Martin, were passengers in the bus. Three days ago, a 68-year-old woman was killed in an accident in Tobago involving a cement truck. The woman, identified as Claudia Hunte, was from Trinidad.