Chester Sam­bra­no

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ap­peal­ing to dri­vers and all road users to use the roads with greater care and cau­tion. The re­minder comes as po­lice had to re­spond to three fa­tal road traf­fic col­li­sions that took the lives of four peo­ple.

The TTPS said around 5:45 pm, on Sat­ur­day, Randy Thomas, 52 years old of Mar­aval was rid­ing his mo­tor­cy­cle in an east­er­ly di­rec­tion along the North Coast Road just be­fore the look­out when his bike re­port­ed­ly picked up a skid and he fell in­to the path­way of a van that was pro­ceed­ing in an op­po­site di­rec­tion. Thomas suf­fered fa­tal in­juries and died in tran­sit to the hos­pi­tal.

On Sun­day morn­ing, at around 2:00 am, Chris Ra­goo­nanan, 29 years old of Har­mo­ny Hall, Gas­par­il­lo was pro­ceed­ing in a west­er­ly di­rec­tion whilst dri­ving a white Hyundai Ac­cent to­geth­er with front seat pas­sen­ger Ani­ta Mitchell 34 years old of Union Park East, Mara­bel­la, along Union Road, Mara­bel­la, when she lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle and col­lid­ed with the con­crete wall of a Hard­ware caus­ing dam­age to the en­tire front of the ve­hi­cle. The dri­ver suc­cumbed to her in­juries on the scene. 

Then, lat­er on Sun­day evening at around 8:20 pm, 28-year-old Akel Mark Thomas of Pat­na Vil­lage, Diego Mar­tin, was dri­ving a Hyundai Elantra in an east­er­ly di­rec­tion along the West­ern Main Road, Ch­aguara­mas to­geth­er with front seat pas­sen­ger Jeraldin Mata­moro 25-years-old, of Hale land Park, Mar­aval when, in the vicin­i­ty of O2 Park, it was al­leged that he at­tempt­ed to over­take a line of traf­fic at a high rate of speed when he lost con­trol and his ve­hi­cle swerved off the road­way and flipped in­to the sea.

Both Fire Ser­vices per­son­nel and civil­ians present at­tempt­ed to re­sus­ci­tate the vic­tims af­ter they were re­trieved from the wa­ter but they re­mained un­re­spon­sive. Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO) Dr Al­ber­to Bal­bue­na ar­rived at the scene and pro­nounced both per­sons de­ceased and or­dered the re­moval of both bod­ies.

Ac­cord­ing to the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch Road­way Sur­veil­lance Unit, these four road traf­fic deaths bring the cur­rent road death toll to forty-one com­pared to forty-two for the same pe­ri­od last year. Po­lice Road Safe­ty Project Co­or­di­na­tor, Sgt Brent Bat­son com­ment­ed that “al­though our en­force­ment ef­forts con­tin­ue to tar­get un­safe road use, road users do not seem to be re­ceiv­ing the mes­sage of the dan­gers of en­gag­ing in risk-tak­ing be­hav­iours on the road­ways and sad­ly these pre­ventable in­ci­dents con­tin­ue to oc­cur with im­mea­sur­able loss to fam­i­lies and loved ones. For the year 2024, the TTPS traf­fic units have is­sued over 3,500 speed­ing tick­ets to dri­vers for ex­ceed­ing road­way speed lim­its and over 9,000 tick­ets is­sued for seat­belt vi­o­la­tions. These are high-risk be­hav­iours that can re­sult in se­ri­ous in­juries or death on the roads.”

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent, Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, David Pow­der added “The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to com­bat­ting crime, which in­volves a heavy fo­cus on road polic­ing. Dri­vers need to ex­pect in­creased road check ex­er­cis­es and have their doc­u­ments ready for pro­duc­tion but more im­por­tant­ly, we ap­peal to the pub­lic to sup­port our pub­lic safe­ty ef­forts by com­ply­ing with road traf­fic laws.”