Last week, Mitra Ramesar attended his father’s funeral and now he is mourning his wife, who was killed in an accident on Wednesday which left him and his son hospitalised.
Up to Thursday afternoon, relatives had not told 10-year-old Naveen that his mother Sarika died.
“He can’t live without his mother. He tell his mother when I have ten years, then you could stop looking after me. He want his mother dry him after he bath, he want his mother to do everything for him,” sobbed Ramesar’s sister Marsha Noor yesterday.
Relatives gathered at their Debe home yesterday, as they reflected that exactly one week ago, they were at that same house for the funeral of Ramesar’s father, Errol.
Ramesar’s mother Meena, 73, sat among the relatives but spoke a few words as they all tried to come to terms with this latest blow.
The family was returning home in a silver Hyundai Tucson when the vehicle developed a problem and Mitra pulled on the southern side of the highway, between the Esperance Overpass and Debe flyover, to await assistance.
However, around 4.30 pm, a six-wheeler, 10-tonne Mitsubishi truck carrying logs, driven by a 36-year-old man of Bristol Village, Mayaro, ran off the road and slammed into the back of the family’s vehicle.
Both vehicles flipped and landed in the bushes. The Tucson ended up in a ditch. A light pole was also rooted out during the collision.
A motorist who went to the family’s assistance said he and another man removed the child from the wreck.
Ramesar, 52, managed to come out of the vehicle on his own but Sarika, 39, was pinned in the back seat.
Noor said her brother and his wife own a jewellery store in Siparia and they had gone to do a business transaction and were on their way back home.
“On his way back he called my sister and he said that his vehicle stalled. He asked her to pick up Sarika and the child. That was about 4.30 pm. My sister left here. By the time she reached Golconda she did not see the vehicle. She saw the log truck but she was not seeing him. She called on his phone but he was not answering. Then someone answered and said that there was an accident,” she recalled.
Ramesar’s other sister, Lystra Goberdhan, said Sarika was alive and on a stretcher when she got to the scene. She said Sarika was not talking but she was blinking and had moved her hand.
“I say Sar, I want to take off the ring and Sarika just lift she finger,” she said.
She said the paramedics told them not to touch her because she probably suffered a broken neck.Goberdhan said she left Sarika for a few seconds to find Ramesar and within that time Sarika died.