An ac­ci­dent in Aranguez short­ly af­ter mid­night on Fri­day has claimed the life of one man.

Iden­ti­fied as Deron Ban­ka, the 33-year-old con­struc­tion work­er died min­utes af­ter he was struck by the dri­ver of a Hilux ve­hi­cle as he and his preg­nant com­pan­ion walked to their home.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred at the cor­ner of Fred­dy Street and Aranguez Main Road.

Re­ports in­di­cate Ban­ka and his part­ner had just left a pop­u­lar wa­ter­ing hole—a block down from the well-known au­to re­pairs out­fit Sus­pen­sion King—when the two al­leged­ly be­gan ar­gu­ing.

Re­ports in­di­cate the dri­ver of the Hilux had stopped to at­tend to some­thing and while parked on the road, Ban­ka held on to the door of the truck. It is be­lieved the dri­ver hit Ban­ka as he drove off.

Re­al­is­ing he had struck Ban­ka, the dri­ver al­leged­ly stopped a short dis­tance away be­fore he drove to the po­lice sta­tion and re­port­ed the in­ci­dent.

Ban­ka sus­tained mas­sive head in­juries and re­mained ly­ing on the road as passers-by and near­by res­i­dents re­spond­ed to his part­ner’s cries for help.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one home-own­er re­called hear­ing the woman scream­ing min­utes af­ter the ac­ci­dent.

He said, "I re­mem­ber hear­ing a bot­tle break and then the woman start­ed yelling for help. I got dressed and came down and saw the woman beg­ging the man to get up but he was bad­ly in­jured and gasp­ing."

Crit­i­cal of the Emer­gency Health Ser­vices as the am­bu­lance did not ar­rive un­til al­most 20 min­utes af­ter the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, the res­i­dent who re­quest­ed his name not be used, won­dered if the sit­u­a­tion could have had a dif­fer­ent out­come.

Mean­while, em­ploy­ees of Sus­pen­sion King said they ar­rived for work and found blood pools lit­ter­ing the front of the well-known es­tab­lish­ment. And the own­er/op­er­a­tor of Spad Stu­dio Tat­too­ing Ser­vices al­so re­port­ed the glass door had been dam­aged.

Busi­ness own­ers in the area ex­pressed dis­gust and fear re­gard­ing the lev­el of vul­gar­i­ty and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour tak­ing place with­in the com­mu­ni­ty as they spoke of drunk­en brawls, fights and dal­liances in se­clud­ed ar­eas.

Com­mend­ing the po­lice for hav­ing in­creased pa­trols in re­cent times, they, how­ev­er, be­lieve more needs to be done to en­sure law and or­der is pre­served, es­pe­cial­ly on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.