An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Tears flowed yes­ter­day for the cou­ple who trag­i­cal­ly drowned in Ch­aguara­mas on Sun­day night af­ter their car skid­ded off the road and land­ed in the sea.

Rel­a­tives of Akel Mark Thomas, 29, of Pat­na Vil­lage, Diego Mar­tin, and Jeraldin Mata­moro, 26, of Hale­land Park, Mar­aval, wept as they gath­ered yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James.

How­ev­er, both sets of fam­i­lies de­clined to speak with re­porters when ap­proached.

It is al­leged the cou­ple was head­ing east along the West­ern Main Road in a sil­ver-grey Hyundai Elantra near the O2 Park, Ch­aguara­mas, around 8.20 pm when the dri­ver over­took a line of mo­torists in traf­fic.
The dri­ver lost con­trol of the car, which skid­ded off the road and flipped in­to the sea.

As on­look­ers alert­ed po­lice and fire of­fi­cers, civil­ians wast­ed no time jump­ing in­to the dark wa­ters to help the trapped cou­ple.
Fire­fight­ers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion ar­rived to find sev­er­al peo­ple at­tempt­ing to pull Thomas’ body out of the wa­ter, which prompt­ed the of­fi­cers to turn their at­ten­tion to res­cu­ing Mata­moro.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to re­sus­ci­tate both vic­tims proved un­suc­cess­ful.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer lat­er pro­nounced both dead at the scene.

Al­though a child’s safe­ty seat was seen strapped in the ve­hi­cle and sev­er­al search­es were car­ried out in the wa­ter, no oth­er bod­ies were found.

Rel­a­tives of both vic­tims lat­er con­firmed the child was not in the ve­hi­cle at the time of the ac­ci­dent.