Senior Reporter
sascha.wilson@guardian.co.tt
“Mummy, I love you,” were the last words 21-year-old Naomi Ramnarine said to her mother before leaving her Rio Claro home with her boyfriend yesterday.
Less than two hours later, Ramnarine was dead, following a tragic two-vehicle head-on collision in Princes Town in which three other people, including Ramnarine’s boyfriend, were injured. She was the second woman killed in a road traffic accident within 36 hours. Lysanne Julien was killed after a collision involving a PTSC bus and a Honda Vezel at the intersection of Henry and Park Streets in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday.
Ramnarine had left her Rio Claro home with her 22-year-old boyfriend and his mother to pick up a relative at the airport.
Less than two hours later, just before 5 am, tragedy struck along the M1 Tasker Road.
Naomi, the front seat passenger of a van driven by her 22-year-old boyfriend, died after a collision with an oncoming car.
Her boyfriend, his mother and the other driver suffered injuries and were treated at the San Fernando General Hospital.
“Oh God, that is my only daughter. God give me two daughter, one die with heart and this one get in an accident,” lamented Naomi’s father, Purbudial Ramnarine, at the scene.
Ramnarine and his wife, Naseem, recalled that their daughter was in good spirits when she left home around 3.30 am.
“We talk, we make joke, we laugh. She say, ‘Mummy I love you, I going.’ I say go, come back safe.”
Ramnarine said he was told that the driver of the car had swerved into the path of his daughter’s boyfriend.
He also claimed that the driver was intoxicated, but police did not confirm this. Calling for irresponsible drivers to be held accountable, he said, “Drinking on the whole for me is a problem, especially for drinking and driving. The law have to do something about this. How many more lives?”
The parents said the couple was planning to get married early next year. “She was trying to make up some money to build a place or buy a property, and get married,” said Ramnarine.
TTPS Strategic Road Safety project coordinator Sgt Brent Batson said the road death figure was 82, although data from the TTPS showed 81 deaths.
He said, “Data indicates an 86 per cent increase in vehicular passenger deaths for 2025, with 26 passengers being killed compared to 14 for the same period last year. And main roads, which are associated with lower speed limits, accounting for 52 per cent of road deaths.”
Noting that the TTPS continued to be concerned over the preventable nature of these tragedies, he said simple actions such as reducing speed at an intersection, obeying speed limits and wearing seat belts were proven strategies to help reduce and mitigate collision risk.
Batson said while the TTPS would continue to do its part, the motoring public needed to wake up and realise reckless, careless or inattentive drivers translated to serious injury or deaths on the roads.
Road traffic data obtained from the TTPS also indicated May and August recorded the highest fatalities, with 16 deaths each. There were also 70 road fatalities and 80 road fatalities from January to September 4 in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Speaking during CNC3’s Morning Brew yesterday, TTPS media ambassador ASP Owie Russell noted that drivers tended to increase speed on the roads when there was low traffic.
Urging motorists, particularly young drivers, to slow down, he said, “Remember that speed kills. The faster you drive your vehicle, the less your reaction time should something happen; the less chance for you to successfully respond to an emergency or something untoward that might happen at the spur of the moment.”
Meanwhile, Arrive Alive president Sharon Inglefield said they were deeply saddened by the preventable carnage on the nation’s roads. She also appealed to all passengers and motorists to wear seatbelts and slow down.
She appealed to the nation’s leaders to undertake an independent International Road Assessment Programme regarding the location of serious road traffic crashes this year.
