Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For years, Clyde Boodoo strug­gled with de­pres­sion and al­co­holism, but on Sun­day night, his life came to a trag­ic end when he was fa­tal­ly struck by a car in Debe.

Rel­a­tives be­lieve Boodoo was on his way home and was try­ing to cross the Solomon Ho­choy High­way as a short­cut to reach his house at Gand­hi Vil­lage, Debe, when the ac­ci­dent hap­pened.

Ac­cord­ing to ini­tial re­ports, around 9 pm, a 43-year-old fe­male dri­ver was head­ing south along the high­way in her Toy­ota Aqua in an area where the street­lights were not work­ing. She told po­lice that just af­ter the Debe over­pass, she sud­den­ly saw a plaid-coloured shirt ap­pear in front of her ve­hi­cle be­fore the im­pact. The dri­ver was tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. Po­lice said her Aqua had dam­age to the front bumper, bon­net, wind­screen, and hood. The ve­hi­cle was towed to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion.

Boodoo’s fam­i­ly, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said they did not blame the dri­ver for his death and be­lieve he was in­tox­i­cat­ed at the time.

“God is a for­giv­ing God. She (the dri­ver) will have to adapt and try to over­come this,” said one of Boodoo’s rel­a­tives. How­ev­er, she urged the au­thor­i­ties to in­stall prop­er lights and signs along that dark stretch of the high­way to help pre­vent fu­ture tragedies.

Boodoo had lived in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da, for about 20 years, where he got mar­ried but lat­er di­vorced. He worked var­i­ous jobs, in­clud­ing as an artist and club man­ag­er, and with sev­er­al com­pa­nies. But de­spite his ef­forts, he con­tin­ued to bat­tle de­pres­sion and even­tu­al­ly re­turned to Trinidad.

“We tried our best with him,” his cousin said, ex­plain­ing that Boodoo lived with them for a time but, due to chal­lenges with his ad­dic­tion, they had to ask him to leave. Ini­tial­ly, he strug­gled with al­co­hol and drugs, and they took him to sev­er­al re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres. About two years ago, he stopped us­ing drugs but con­tin­ued to bat­tle al­co­hol ad­dic­tion.

His cousin re­called that about five years ago, Boodoo was so in­tox­i­cat­ed he fell asleep on the road and was run over by a truck. He spent three months in hos­pi­tal re­cov­er­ing. She said he was try­ing to over­come his ad­dic­tion and had even start­ed writ­ing a book about his fight with de­pres­sion.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be done this week at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain. San Fer­nan­do po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.