Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

What start­ed as an act of kind­ness turned dead­ly for a Moru­ga man at Gulf City Mall in La Ro­main yes­ter­day.

Ethan Col­ly­more was as­sist­ing a 35-year-old fe­male dri­ver to park her car when she ac­ci­den­tal­ly re­versed in­to him, pin­ning him un­der the ve­hi­cle near Kap­pa Drugs.

A se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who wit­nessed the tragedy said around 10:40 am Col­ly­more had moved a cone and was stand­ing be­hind the car to guide the woman in­to the park­ing space. In­stead of press­ing on the brakes, she re­port­ed­ly pressed the ac­cel­er­a­tor, caus­ing the ve­hi­cle to speed back­wards.

The of­fi­cer re­called, “While mov­ing the cone, he went be­hind the ve­hi­cle to give di­rec­tion to come back, and ap­par­ent­ly she foot, in­stead of go­ing on the brakes, it went on the clutch or X or what­ev­er, and the ve­hi­cle end up go­ing back in high speed and hit the guy, flip up in the air and drop back down on top of him. The dri­ver was bawl­ing, she was so scared.”

With help from oth­ers, they took her out of the ve­hi­cle and then lift­ed the ve­hi­cle to get to Col­ly­more.

He was bleed­ing from in­juries to his head and com­plain­ing that he was in pain. The of­fi­cer said at one point, Col­ly­more stopped breath­ing, and med­ical work­ers from the near­by drug­store per­formed CPR and kept him alive un­til the am­bu­lance ar­rived.

He was not pleased with the am­bu­lance re­sponse. “The am­bu­lance took a lil while to come. Prob­a­bly if they had come a lil ear­li­er on, he could have sur­vived.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that Col­ly­more was a for­mer se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer/park­ing at­ten­dant em­ployed with Car­ni­val City.

When con­tact­ed, Sarah Ra­goonath, the mall’s mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, ex­pressed con­do­lences to Col­ly­more’s fam­i­ly. She de­clined to give any de­tails on the ac­ci­dent as it is un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, she said every­one was trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent. Mean­while, the dri­ver who works at Car­ni­val City was ques­tioned by the po­lice but not de­tained.

San Fer­nan­do po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.