A 35-year-old resident of Kuru Kuru Public Road on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, who was also a father of one, was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
John Wickham, a fisherman and labourer was struck down at about 09:30h on Friday.
Based on reports, Wickham was observed on the western side of the Kuru Kuru Public Road with blood about his body and bloodstains also running along the western side of the road.
He was picked up by Police in a semi-conscious condition and taken to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre where he was examined by a doctor on duty and pronounced dead on arrival.
His younger sister, Suzette Knowles, told Guyana Times on Saturday she was told that her brother was found on the road by a driver who was passing.
“He was walking heading home in the vicinity of Kuru Kuru almost to the area of the access road, to the then National Service which I think is now Youth Corp, not far from umbrella party. A vehicle was coming and they saw something on the road. As they got closure, they realised it was a human being. So, they lifted him and placed him on this side of the road and they call the Police.
Dead: John Wickham
The woman said she was told when the Police arrived on the scene, they placed Wickham in their vehicle, and took him the Diamond Diagnostic Centre.
“The Police spoke with him, he responded, he gave them my mother’s number and her name upon request from the Police. When he got to the hospital he asked if they can just put on a bed, he wants to lay down. Once he laid there, the officer said he took his last breath, he fixed himself, and he took his last breath.”
“We do not know if a car hit him, a bus, a truck, nothing we don’t know, we cannot tell,” Knowles said.
According to the dead man’s sister, Wickham recently moved to the area from Bee-hive on the East Coast of Demerara, to live closer to his parents.
“A month now he moved up the Highway, where his mother and his father they are, he has property up there and he was getting ready to build a home up there,” she said.
When asked how the family is coping with the news of Wickham’s sudden death, Knowles said “We are devastated, we are disoriented, some of us feel depressed because where the accident occurred is dark, you cannot see, and people are not there like that. We would have feel better knowing that the person went to the station, which was just about a mile away”.
“It is so difficult for us because we feel as though you hit a cow or you hit dog, or a sheep, or a goat or something, because you have not even stopped, you have not even acknowledged that you hit someone. That has added to the gaping wound that we currently have,” Knowles explained.
She said it is even more difficult for their family because her brother was very jovial and was the one who put smiles on all of their faces, adding that she is even more concerned about his five-year-old daughter, who will now have to grow up without a father.
“This is very hard because they both shared a bond and we don’t even know how to tell her that her father is dead. We are pleading for the person or persons responsible, if they could just turn themselves in, we need closure and I just trust that it happens,” the tearful woman said. (G9)
