Minister within the Ministry of Education, Dr Desrey Fox, injured on Tuesday evening, when an ambulance responding to an emergency call crashed into her motor car at the junction of Irving Street and Thomas Road (outside the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Compound), remains warded at the High Dependency Unit (HDU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Dr Desrey Fox’s wrecked motor car

Hospital authorities yesterday afternoon said that Dr Fox was resting comfortably, adding that her condition was listed as stable. However, having suffered injuries to the head and back, she was being assisted by medical staffers who continue to monitor her condition closely.

Others injured in the car in which the Minister and family members were travelling were two-year-old Carlos Fox (her grandson) and Andrea Dos Santos, 19. Having sustained minor injuries, they were both treated at the GPH and discharged. This newspaper learnt that Dr Fox’s son, who was driving her motor car at the time of the accident, was not seriously hurt. He too was observed and sent home.

Meanwhile, the driver of the GPHC’s ambulance, which was badly wrecked, along with attendants, sustained minor injuries after his air bags were deflated.

The wrecked GPH ambulance at the scene of the accident.

A third vehicle involved in the accident – hire car HB4065, struck out of its lane on impact by one of the vehicles which was thrust several feet ahead from the point of impact of the collision, was also badly damaged. The passengers – a woman and two young children were also treated for shock.

The accident happened around 18:00 hrs. as Dr Fox’s motor car which had just come out of Sandy Babb Street was crossing Irving Street. Witnesses said the ambulance, proceeding north along the Irving Highway was sounding its siren, but the driver of the motor car apparently did not hear nor did he see the vehicle approaching. With the green light in his favour, he drove out of Sandy Babb Street and into the path of the speeding ambulance. It is however not clear which of the two vehicles struck the hire car which was proceeding east out of Thomas Road, but, like others on the scene at the time, had stopped at the corner to allow the ambulance to pass.

Hospital officials confirmed that the ambulance was on its way to Haslington, East Coast Demerara, to pick up a patient. Driver of motor car HB 4065, Gregory Douglas, badly traumatised, said he was taking a woman and her two children to a destination on the East Coast Demerara as well.

Coincidentally, family friends of Dr Fox , Anne Marie De Jesus and Laura Winters of Long Creek, Soesdyke Linden Highway, were at the time of the accident under a benab outside the army compound and witnessed the accident. Winters, who had spotted the car driving out of Sandy Babb Street, said she was excited when she saw Dr Fox arriving, but that glee was short-lived, for in an instant the vehicle had crashed. “I looked and saw a little boy wearing a yellow shirt fly through the windscreen and up into the air.”

Winters said she and her colleagues rushed to the scene, but when she looked into the car, Dr Fox was pinned inside – her legs were trapped and the men were busy trying to free her.” She recalled seeing blood oozing from her mouth; there was injury to the head, and she was unconscious. “I did not like the way she was breathing,” Winters recounted. She surmised the Minister must have been going to the National Park to exercise since she was wearing her PT clothes, she said.

The scene of the accident, with three wrecked vehicles at the junction quickly attracted a crowd as Guyana Defence Force soldiers and police ranks immediately got about rescue operations, removing the injured from the wrecked vehicles and ferrying them to hospital. Meantime, traffic at the junction ground to a standstill. As a precautionary measure, the Fire Department hurriedly deployed a fire tender to assist rescue operations.