THIRTEEN-year-old Shemar Henry, who was hit by a speeding car on the Goed Fortuin Public Road on May 29, remains on life support at the Georgetown Public Hospital.The lad, who turned 13 just four days after the accident, was last Monday transferred to the High Dependency Unit (HDU), where he remains in a state of unconsciousness and can only breathe through a tube inserted into his throat.
He is also being fed intravenously.
Shemar is unable to speak, and even though his eyes are open, he appears not to be seeing and cannot respond to persons at his bedside. Injuries suffered by the lad include four fractures to the head, facial fracture and a host of other technical complications, which have left his family in deep agony.
Meanwhile, the other person injured in that accident, 43-year-old Wazir Ali of 18 Industry Front, East Coast Demerara, is warded at the Male Surgical Unit with his left leg amputated after three surgical interventions. There is also a deep incision into his right leg which has carried about 20 stitches.
Recounting the horror of the accident and the agony associated with it, Ali told the Guyana Chronicle that on May 29, he was standing at the roadside on the Goed Fortuin Public Road awaiting transportation to Georgetown, en route to his home at Industry Front, East Coast Demerara, when tragedy struck.
Ali recalled that a shiny black motorcar drove up and the driver asked him to allow him some space so he could park and leave the vehicle for a while.
Ali complied and at that moment looked up the road and saw another motorcar approaching at a terrific speed. Noticing Shemar and two other boys walking in the same vicinity, he called out to them, cautioning them to beware.
But before he had finished his warning, another motorcar, (a Blue Bird), said to be driving at a terrific speed, slammed into one of them, (who happened to be Shemar Henry).
The lad was sent flying through the air while the car ploughed into Ali, and rammed him into the shiny black car that had just taken up parking. His left leg was crushed and he ended up in a sludgy black water drain where his exposed tissues remained submerged.
It was around 15:15 hrs and the lads were going to play football. Word quickly went around and Shemar’s mother, Sharon Henry, rushed to the scene where she initially had trouble getting a taxi to take her bleeding child to hospital.
Meanwhile, an ambulance was passing shortly after with a pregnant woman, and public-spirited persons at the scene flagged the bus down and begged the driver to take Ali to the GPHC.
Meanwhile, the man who allegedly caused the accident and injuries is said to be a ‘man-of-the-cloth’ (a pastor) from a nearby community. Even though he was said to have visited the teen in hospital twice, the distraught wife of Wazir Ali claims he has never visited her husband.
