KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Mys­tery sur­rounds a fa­tal ac­ci­dent in San Fer­nan­do on Mon­day, which claimed the life of 88-year-old Sum­intra Dabiesingh.

De­spite the crash oc­cur­ring along the busy Pa­pourie Road, Di­a­mond Vil­lage, with many cam­eras around, in­ves­ti­ga­tors are still try­ing to de­ter­mine what caused the crash.

Po­lice said Dabiesingh, who lived in Phillip­ine, was sit­ting in the back­seat of her daugh­ter An­janie Bis­ram’s grey Hyundai Tuc­son SUV.

Her great-grand­son Raiden Gopaul, ten, was in the front pas­sen­ger seat. As Bis­ram, 70, drove around 4 pm, she lost con­trol and crashed head-on in­to a steel gate and con­crete pil­lar at Veron­i­ca Lall’s home.

Dabiesingh died on im­pact, while Bis­ram suf­fered se­vere trau­ma. Raiden es­caped in­juries as the airbag de­ployed.

Fire­fight­ers res­cued Bis­ram and Raiden from the SUV, and an am­bu­lance took them to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH). 

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Dhan­raj ex­am­ined Dabiesingh’s body and un­der­tak­ers took it to the mor­tu­ary of the SFGH. Bis­ram re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the In­ten­sive Care Unit yes­ter­day. 

Lall, 49, and her daugh­ter, An­ish­ta, 18, were not at home when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred as they went to a bank. They stopped at a su­per­mar­ket on their way home when a vil­lager in­formed them about the ac­ci­dent.

“When I came in front of my place, it was down. The ve­hi­cle was on the road. There was a dead woman in the car. There was an in­jured woman in the dri­ver’s seat. I start­ed to hear all dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ries,” Lall said.

One sto­ry was that a truck gave Bis­ram a bad dri­ve, and she tried to pull away and lost brak­ing abil­i­ty. An­oth­er per­son claimed Bis­ram was speed­ing. Lall said she was work­ing with her cam­era tech­ni­cian to get footage of what hap­pened.

Lall’s hus­band, Vi­jay Lall, died from can­cer 15 months ago, so she felt light­head­ed when she saw the scene. Lall was thank­ful that she and her daugh­ter were not at home, as she said she usu­al­ly parks her car where the crash oc­curred. She be­lieves that im­pact could have pushed her car in­to the house. She said while ac­ci­dents hap­pen, there must be an ex­pla­na­tion for the tragedy.

“A sol­id con­crete wall, steel gate, steel beam and every­thing fall. Some­thing is not right, but I will not con­tra­dict or an­tic­i­pate any­thing. I am wait­ing on my footage, which I know my cam­era picked up very clean­ly, then I will say ex­act­ly what hap­pened.”

A rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia that Bis­ram went to pick up Raiden from school and took Dabiesingh, a moth­er of six and grand­moth­er of 13, along for the ride.

They went to KFC for their usu­al Mon­day treat and then to See-Vu Op­ti­cal to check on his glass­es.

“They were re­turn­ing from there when it hap­pened. What peo­ple said hap­pened was that a truck gave them a bad dri­ve. I do not know, but we were try­ing to get the footage from the bar and con­ve­nient­ly, no one’s cam­eras were work­ing. We will try to get some­thing from the bak­ery to get some clo­sure,” the rel­a­tive said.

The rel­a­tive said Bis­ram was one of the safe­ty dri­vers in the fam­i­ly, dri­ving at a max­i­mum speed of 40 km/h, es­pe­cial­ly with her moth­er and grand­son in the SUV.

“If you knew, she (Dabiesingh) grew up with a dif­fi­cult life, mean­ing she had to work hard. She and her hus­band were not rich peo­ple. They strug­gled but cared for her six chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, but she al­ways gave some­thing away,” the rel­a­tive added.