A weeder attached to Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Albion Estate passed away on Monday afternoon after being hit by a car traveling along the Corentyne Highway on Saturday evening.
Dead is 27-year-old Nikon Tappin of Fyrish Road.
Family members have raised concerns about the police investigations and made allegations of unprofessional behaviour.
The incident occurred at about 20:55h according to CCTV footage at Kilcoy along the Corentyne Highway where Tappin was sitting on his motorcycle when he was hit by a speeding car. At the time Tappin was said to have been in conversation with his barber.
Tappin, who is also a poultry farmer, had left home to purchase ice cream from the supermarket and was chatting when he was hit. The car crashed into a structure along the road shoulder hitting Tappin propelling him several meters through the air.
“By Fyrish bus shed they have a drop on the road and I see this car overtake two cars coming around the turn, so I telling myself that this man don’t realise that they have a drop there… I see this man not easing the pace that he coming with so I had to ride into somebody yard to save myself. Then I see he end up over on the other side of the road. I say I hope that he don’t knock nobody,” his cousin Gimmel Shepard told this publication.
Shepard said he had earlier spoken to his cousin, who was supposed to give him a drop to work and Tappin told him that he was going to purchase ice cream and wait until he was ready.
“A boy come and say that Nikon just get knock on the road. Right away I asked him what colour is the car. I asked him if it was a dark green car and he say yes. I tell him that the man could have killed me just now. When I go to the scent I see Nikon lying down there on the road,” the cousin related.
The injured man was picked up and taken to the Port Mourant Hospital and then transferred to the New Amsterdam Hospital. As a result of the severity of his injuries, he was then transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital in a critical condition.
Shepard said his cousin had severe head injuries.
“It is just his head I see open up and some fine bruises on his skin.”
Meanwhile, the now-dead man’s uncle, Ruben Caesar related that on Saturday evening they received information suggesting that the driver of the car was imbibing earlier.
“They [the doctors] explained to me that by he got in his head, the brain was swollen and there was bleeding between the brain and the skull,” he related.
Caesar said after they left the Port Mourant Hospital, they stopped at Albion Police Station on their way to New Amsterdam Hospital and engaged two traffic ranks.
“I asked them why they didn’t do a breathalyzer test on the guy. They told us that we could sit and wait until a senior officer come.”
The crash occurred about 300 meters away from Albion Police Station. Family members have expressed concern over what they claimed is the apparent slothfulness in the police investigation saying that although the accident occurred on Saturday up to Monday afternoon police had not placed any markings on the roadway, as per protocol in accident investigations.
