–driver never once visited or enquired about his condition

TWENTY-NINE-year-old Reyon Fraser of De Kendren, West Coast Demerara has been languishing on a bed in the Georgetown Public Hospital ever since March 27, when a motor car driven by Moses Looknauth of Parika, East Bank Essequibo, ploughed into him on the public road at Meten-Meer-Zorg, WCD, causing him to sustain severe spinal injuries, injuries to the head, and multiple compound fractures to the upper and lower right leg.

With steel implanted in his upper leg, he remains in one position on the bed (due to spinal injuries), and continues to agonise in pain whenever he is touched. He literally reeks of pain and self-pity, and is literally ‘pining away’ from his condition.

But incredibly, the motorist responsible for his debilitating condition continues to drive his vehicle every day, without even once visiting the individual he had almost written off, or enquiring about the man’s welfare from his frustrated and grieving relatives.

Reyon’s mother recalled that Looknauth’s mother had twice visited the injured man empty-handedly and with a ‘tale of woe’ about the personal expenses facing Looknauth’s family. She had ended both her visits with a promise to pray for Reyon.

Reyon’s deeply distraught mother, Mrs. Deborah Johnson, lamenting the stressful and fatiguing ordeal she is faced to daily endure, said that her son’s injury also imposes a heavy financial burden on her family.

Reyon has since had two Computed Tomography (CT) scans, half the cost of which his mother has had to pay. He has also had a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) procedure done on him, the entire cost of which she has had to pay. Moreover, she and/or other family members have to visit him daily in hospital and provide for his day-to-day needs, but they are doing it out of love and a sense of commitment.

Mrs. Johnson recalled that on the day her son had the accident, he had gone over to a shop to buy a soda, and as he was returning home, he was walking on the right hand side of the road when a ‘top-of-the-line’ (luxury) motor car proceeding from the opposite direction swerved into his lane and struck him down.

Persons who had witnessed the accident said that after Reyon had been struck down, the driver got out of the car, but on the advice of another man at the scene, he proceeded to remove the car from the spot at which it had struck its victim. They subsequently called the police, who arrived on the scene and commenced investigations.

Despite the accident causing fragments of the vehicle to litter the road, the police reportedly lent a blind eye and, two days later, the man walked free again.

Nevertheless, a female rank who was allegedly stationed at the Leonora Police Station, and who was nowhere near the scene of the accident, visited the patient in hospital one day and callously informed his relatives that he was wrong.

Following that visit, the man’s condition allegedly declined gradually, and he appears to have taken the injustice to heart.

(By Shirley Thomas)