“Nah it have no for­give­ness!”

This is how Clint Rogers, the fa­ther of sev­en-year-old Ja­heim Sama­roo, feels about the man whose ac­tions re­sult­ed in his son’s death.

On Tues­day morn­ing, Ja­heim was on his way to school when he was knocked down while cross­ing the road. The sev­en-year-old died a few hours lat­er while be­ing treat­ed at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his An­tigua Road, Waller­field home yes­ter­day, Rogers said the death of his last-born child has left him dev­as­tat­ed. He said the thought of for­give­ness is far from his mind at this time, es­pe­cial­ly since the dri­ver of the van had yet to even ac­knowl­edge what hap­pened.

“He nev­er tell me he sor­ry, with a sin­cere apol­o­gy. That for­give­ness will take a while, it have no for­give­ness right now. Me and God have a re­la­tion­ship, and I know in time to come, he will be for­giv­en, but not now,” the griev­ing fa­ther said.

Rogers said his son was look­ing for­ward to get­ting a com­put­er tablet for his eighth birth­day, which he would have cel­e­brat­ed on Oc­to­ber 28.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice and as seen in CCTV footage ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, just af­ter 7.30 am, Ja­heim was cross­ing near the Va­len­cia By­pass Road with his old­er broth­er Oma­l­ly, when he was knocked down by a van. The child was dragged some 50 feet away. So se­vere was the im­pact that Ja­heim’s back­pack re­mained lodged in the front fend­er of the pick­up.

Po­lice said Ja­heim and his two sib­lings Oma­l­ly, 9, and Sade, 12, were at­tempt­ing to cross the road, which they did every day, to en­ter a bus to take them to school. They were at the pedes­tri­an cross­ing. While oth­er ve­hi­cles stopped for the chil­dren to cross, a mo­torist dri­ving a van al­leged­ly broke the line of traf­fic, just as Ja­heim and his sib­lings were cross­ing. Oma­l­ly, who was a few feet in front of his broth­er, es­caped with­out in­jury while their sis­ter Sade looked on in hor­ror as the ve­hi­cle col­lid­ed with her youngest broth­er.

The 12-year-old yes­ter­day said she is haunt­ed by her broth­er’s death.

“We screamed and screamed. I ran to­wards Ja­heim, who was still alive. I held his hands and begged him to stay alive. He looked at me, then closed his eyes and lost con­scious­ness. I will tru­ly miss my ba­by broth­er,” she said while sob­bing un­con­trol­lably.

Fam­i­ly friend An­ton Os­ouna said he had the dis­plea­sure of call­ing Rogers and telling him what had hap­pened.

“I had to go back home be­cause I for­got my wal­let and, on my way, back I no­ticed it had traf­fic, but I thought it was a road­block. When I get clos­er, I saw a set of peo­ple gath­er at one spot and so I know was an ac­ci­dent. Imag­ine hav­ing to call my bredrin and tell him his son now get knock down. You know how that feel?” he lament­ed.

Rogers said Ja­heim, a Stan­dard One pupil of the Va­len­cia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, loved elec­tron­ic de­vices but al­so en­joyed play­ing out­side with his sib­lings. He re­called that when he was build­ing the fam­i­ly house, Ja­heim spent many days help­ing with the con­struc­tion and was dubbed a “lit­tle work­man.”

Rogers said Ja­heim did not want to go to school on Tues­day but did any­way. He now re­grets he changed his son’s mind.

“On Mon­day night I heard him speak­ing with his mum, telling her that he didn’t feel like go­ing to school the next day. But he woke up ear­ly on Tues­day morn­ing, brushed his teeth, bathed, and got ready for school with­out any trou­ble,” he said sad­ly.

Rogers said he be­lieves speed was a fac­tor in his son’s death, since there is a speed bump along An­tigua Road, close to where his son was cross­ing. He said if the road rules were obeyed, his son would have been alive to­day.

“I just want to tell peo­ple that it have a dif­fer­ence be­tween dri­ving hard and dri­ving mad. Dri­ving hard and dri­ving mad is two dif­fer­ent things,” he said.

The dri­ver was ques­tioned by po­lice and lat­er re­leased.

Mean­while, in re­sponse to Ja­heim’s death, Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field has re­newed the call for a com­pre­hen­sive trans­porta­tion sys­tem that will in­cor­po­rate speed lim­its of 20-30 km/h around res­i­den­tial ar­eas, schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. She added that this will in­clude well-de­signed and main­tained side­walks and im­proved pedes­tri­an cross­ings with raised calm­ing humps.

“Such changes would al­low our chil­dren to walk and cy­cle to school safe­ly, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing se­ri­ous in­juries,” she said. —With re­port­ing by Jensen La Vende & Ralph Ban­warie