‘I lost my one and only brother’ – family wants justice for man crushed to death

The family of Rajin Persad, a 37-year-old goldsmith, was plunged into a state of mourning after he lost his life on Monday evening; Persad was crushed by a motor lorry at Hope West Access Road, Enmore, East Coast Demerara.

Police reports indicate that the accident occurred around 19:30hrs; the lorry GWW 8721 was at the time being driven by a 34-year-old Tillackram Dindial.

Dindial, according to police was offloading sand on the northern parapet and while lowering the tray of the lorry and reversing, his wife indicated to him that he “ran over one of their dogs.”

But upon checking, he realised that a body was lying under the truck.

Persad’s sister, Searanie told the News Room on Tuesday at her brother’s Foulis Housing Scheme home that moments after the accident, a neighbor informed them that her brother got ran over by a truck, a stone’s throw away from her house. When she arrived at the scene, she was met with her brother’s bloodied body lying under the lorry.

The grieving woman said family members pleaded with the police officers at the scene to remove the truck from his body as he was still breathing, but those calls went unheeded.

“I asked them, ‘please remove the truck, remove the truck, my from my brother, my brother is alive…’ police that was there, they refuse to move the truck,” the distraught sister said.

“When my son carry the sheet to cover my brother, my brother move, my brother was moving [and] everybody see my brother was moving and start hollering ‘the man ah live’ and we ask them to reverse but the truck owner hold on to the key, and not releasing it.”

“That was my one and only brother, me and he alone and now I ain’t get nobody now.”

According to Searanie, instead of summoning an ambulance to the scene, the police summoned a hearse. Persad was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

His father, Walter Persad told the News Room that doctors at the hospital informed him that his son could have been saved.

“The man seh he coulda mek it but he woulda been paralyzed…he woulda cripple.”

The family is calling for swift justice for Rajin’s death.