Adrian Alexander Downer, a 47-year-old cane harvester of Sixth Street, Fyrish Village Corentyne, is now dead, and four others have been hospitalised after a car being driven by a highly intoxicated man slammed into a utility pole at Cromarty Village, Corentyne on Sunday morning and ended up in a trench.
A Police release has said that at about 0:30h on Sunday, motor car PRR 8753, driven by a 37-year-old of Fyrish, Corentyne Berbice, was proceeding west on the Cromarty Public Road when it became uncontrollable and collided with a utility
Dead: Adrian Alexander Downer
pole before ending up in a trench. The driver and the car’s four other occupants were rushed to the Port Mourant Hospital, where Downer was pronounced dead on arrival. Guyana Times understands that the four other occupants of the car were transferred to the New Amsterdam Hospital, and two of them have subsequently been transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC). The Police release also said the alcohol level of the driver of the motor car was found to be exceedingly above the legal limit.
Reports are that the occupants of the car, residents of Fyrish and nearby villages, were at a wedding at Fyrish, and had all joined the car, which took a sixth person home and was returning to Fyrish when the accident occurred.
Impressions at the scene of the accident suggest that the driver had run into a heap of sand at the side of the road and lost control of the vehicle, which became airborne before slamming into a utility pole, breaking it half way up before the vehicle plunged into a trench. Eyewitnesses say Downer was motionless and appeared to be dead when he was pulled from the wreckage.
While some residents of Cromarty said they had heard nothing, others said there were several loud sounds, and then silence. “The driver, he didn’t really get no injuries. One of them, he did bleeding through he nose; it look like he jaw break,” one eyewitness related. Meanwhile, the dead man’s wife, Nerisa Cort-Downer, a security guard, told this publication that on Saturday evening, as she was about to leave for work, her husband told her he was going to a wedding in the village. She said they were both riding bicycles, and parted company at the Corentyne Highway.
At about 1:15h on Sunday, she received a telephone call from a sister, informing her about the accident. She said she then went to the Port Mourant Hospital, where she saw her husband lying in the tray of a Police vehicle. She said she was
The car lying in the trench below the broken utility pole
asked to identify him. No information was provided to her about the other passengers; however, she had known the vehicle driver since she was a child. “He and my husband is friends because they does cut cane together,” she explained. Villagers say the 37-year-old driver had been involved in several accidents in the past. “Only this month he run off the road and end up on a lady bridge right in Fyrish. How he get there I don’t know, and then last month he run off the road and run over a boy foot,” one villager reported. There are also reports by villagers of two other accidents that the same driver was involved in last year. The driver is currently assisting Police with their investigations into Sunday morning’s accident.
