[UPDATED] Speeding driver kills woman, tells police: ‘Tell her family I sorry’

AFTER crashing into a pedestrian in Debe and seeing her body fly across the road, a Belmont driver initially fled the scene. But sometime later, he returned to the scene and told police to tell the woman's distraught family he was sorry.

Police reported that around 5.25 am on Monday, a 43-year-old Belmont man was driving along SS Erin Road, Debe.

The maxi in front of him stopped and the driver signalled for those behind him to follow suit as someone was about to cross the road.

The driver of the car ignored this and tried to overtake the maxi, running into 49-year-old mother of one, Sadhna Ramcharan.

She was taken to the Siparia Health Facility where she was pronounced dead.

Ramcharan lived at Siew Trace, Debe, and was on her way to work at the San Fernando General Hospital.

Her husband of around 26 years, Adesh Moonilal, had just dropped her off to get a maxi to go to San Fernando to reach for 6 am.

As he always would, he waited to ensure she got into the taxi safely. But this time, he had to witness a horrific ordeal.

Their daughter, Christine Ganga, told Newsday, "The man had to be driving real hard to pitch she up in the air and fly she 40 feet away...If you see how that car mash up. And my mother tiny."

Passers-by alerted Ganga and her aunt Meera Mahadeo, who lives nearby, minutes after it happened.

"Somebody was honking outside and I did just get up to go to work. All my husband tell me is somebody in front and they say mummy get knock down and we put on clothes and gone."

She said her mother's head was badly damaged, one of her feet broke and she was bleeding internally.

Her father had sprung into action immediately and ran to his wife's body when it landed.

"She wasn't breathing," he told Newsday as he cried. "She always said if she got into an accident she don't want to suffer, she want to die one time.

"The taxi man was stopping the man, you know. Where you going with all that speed? This is not the highway.

"She does go with the man every morning, he and all start to cry. The driver (of the car) left and when he come back, they say she (my wife's) hair was still stick up on the windscreen, and he tell the police to tell me he sorry."

He said his wife was a very friendly woman who was not a fan of drama. Other family members said she enjoyed dressing up and was always neat.

Ganga said, "How you could be driving so hard 5.15 am to kill somebody and then tell the police to tell the family he sorry? Police said he say he not coping good with it but he sorry...For a maxi man to be stopping you so and you still coming bullet speed? They said they never got a pulse from her."

Mahadeo said reality had not fully sunk in yet as it still felt like her sister would come walking through the door any minute.

They said, on Sunday, Ramcharan had been speaking about death.

"She was saying if she dead, she want to bury right up the road. She said, 'I go dead one of these days, you know. And allyuh go miss me because I does do everything.'

Ramcharan's mother Leloutwa said, "This 'dead' talk doesn't come just so, you know."

An autopsy is expected to be done on Tuesday.

Ramcharan would have been 50 in December.

PC Tambie is investigating.