Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Tragedy struck over the week­end along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, as five peo­ple lost their lives in two sep­a­rate road traf­fic crash­es, in­clud­ing a six-year-old child and her par­ents, prompt­ing au­thor­i­ties to is­sue a stern warn­ing about an uptick in reck­less dri­ving.

“This nice fam­i­ly just gone,” Malanie King-Ram­roop told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, as she glanced over her fence to the apart­ment rent­ed by Steve, Kizzie and Janea El­der.

The low­er floor of the two-storey prop­er­ty was emp­ty, af­ter all three peo­ple died hours be­fore when their ve­hi­cle flipped near Clax­ton Bay close to mid­night on Sat­ur­day.

Vil­lagers of Lak­pathia Trace, Las Lo­mas #1, said they thought it strange the fam­i­ly did not re­turn home on Sat­ur­day evening. How­ev­er, they learnt the hor­ri­fy­ing rea­son why when they woke up the next day to so­cial me­dia videos of the fam­i­ly’s man­gled white Hyundai Cre­ta.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice, around 11.30 on Sat­ur­day night, of­fi­cers from the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch re­spond­ed to a road traf­fic crash along the south­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, near the Clax­ton Bay fly­over.

It is be­lieved that the dri­ver, Steve El­der, 40, was with four oth­er oc­cu­pants in the car—his wife Kizzy, 38, who sat in the back seat with their daugh­ter Janea, six, and Kath­lyn Wright, while an uniden­ti­fied man was in the front pas­sen­ger seat.

Po­lice sus­pect that El­der lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle, which went ca­reen­ing in­to the grassy me­di­an and over­turned sev­er­al times. The El­der fam­i­ly and Wright died on the scene while the man in the front pas­sen­ger seat sus­tained se­ri­ous in­juries.

As their neigh­bours mourned their pass­ing yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia was told by one woman, “Steve was such a nice guy, he nev­er passed any­one straight in this vil­lage.”

Mean­while, King-Ram­roop, who used to work with Kizzy El­der at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and al­so babysit her daugh­ter Janea, said the loss of the six-year-old makes ac­cept­ing the in­ci­dent an even more bit­ter pill to swal­low.

“That’s a hard one be­cause she’s re­al­ly sweet. She’s al­ways by us, very vi­brant, jol­ly lit­tle girl. So, it re­al­ly is heart-wrench­ing that this has hap­pened,” King-Ram­roop re­called.

“Up to two weeks ago, that lit­tle girl was by me and, you know, she had such a good time. They would scream in the house. I would let them scream. That’s what chil­dren do and af­ter she went home, her dad­dy mes­saged and said Janea had such a good time. You know, she wants to come back again and I told him, I said, she’s wel­come any­time.”

She added that Kizzy al­so left be­hind a 17-year-old son.

Steve El­der was said to have been a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who re­cent­ly re­ceived a pro­mo­tion.

King-Ram­roop said she agreed with some sec­tors of so­ci­ety who feel it may be un­wise for the Gov­ern­ment to do away with the de­mer­it points sys­tem.

“I hon­est­ly think it does not need to be scrapped be­cause it in­stills a bit of fear in some peo­ple who clear­ly don’t have any re­gard to life. So, I hon­est­ly don’t think it should be scrapped. Maybe it could be re­vised but not scrapped.”

Mean­while, in a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, a La Brea man lost his life along the same stretch of high­way. He has been iden­ti­fied as Vic­tor Ryan.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, around 11 pm on Fri­day, of­fi­cers of the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch re­spond­ed to a road traf­fic crash in­volv­ing a taxi which lost con­trol along the south­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, near Charles Street, and col­lid­ed with the guardrail on the cen­tre me­di­an.

Cops no­tice uptick in er­rant dri­ving

Last week­end’s in­ci­dents have in­creased the road fa­tal­i­ty death toll to 44 so far for 2025 ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch Road­way Sur­veil­lance Unit. Forty-nine peo­ple died dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

But while that rep­re­sents a ten per cent re­duc­tion, Lin­coln Daly, the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, said he’s no­ticed a wor­ry­ing trend.

“Of late, my of­fi­cers have been re­spond­ing too of­ten to pre­ventable road traf­fic col­li­sions on the high­ways, many of which in­volve some form of dri­ver er­ror, be it fol­low­ing too close to the ve­hi­cle in front, dri­ving too fast for con­di­tions or be­ing dis­tract­ed by phone use. Dri­vers need to pay more at­ten­tion and fo­cus on their dri­ving and that means obey­ing road traf­fic laws and look­ing out for fel­low dri­vers,” Daly said yes­ter­day.

Po­lice Road Safe­ty Project Co­or­di­na­tor Sargeant Brent Bat­son al­so re­vealed that just over the week­end, 160 dri­vers were is­sued tick­ets for fail­ing to wear seat­belts.

Mean­while, Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field made her feel­ings clear on so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing last week­end’s road deaths.

The road safe­ty ad­vo­cate drew at­ten­tion to the soon-to-be-scrapped de­mer­it points penal­ty sys­tem.

“Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do not un­der­stand the cor­re­la­tion be­tween en­force­ment, feel­ing the con­se­quences of mak­ing poor choic­es by the penal­ty point sys­tem, and then reed­u­ca­tion, and re­train­ing,” she wrote on Face­book.

In­gle­field said the crash high­light­ed the on­go­ing lack of road dis­ci­pline and sys­temic fail­ure to en­force traf­fic laws.

“The po­lice have giv­en out over 328,000 tick­ets year to date, but per­haps over 60,000 dri­vers should have had their dri­ver’s li­cences sus­pend­ed by the time elec­tions were called. They dri­ve on our na­tion’s road net­work with im­puni­ty,” she wrote.

She crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a broad­er na­tion­al mind­set of en­ti­tle­ment and se­lec­tive ad­her­ence to law and or­der.

“Alas, we have an en­ti­tle­ment is­sue in this coun­try, since we are most­ly a well-trav­elled so­ci­ety, and we most­ly do what’s right when we are abroad. We on­ly want good pol­i­cy, law and or­der in our own coun­try when it does NOT af­fect us per­son­al­ly. This is un­pa­tri­ot­ic and not good for na­tion build­ing.”

In­gle­field con­clud­ed her mes­sage with a call for re­flec­tion and greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among road users.