A head-on collision between a truck and minibus at Surapana, Mackenzie, early yesterday morning left a three-year-old boy dead and thirteen others, including his mother, father, and four siblings, seriously injured and hospitalized at the Linden Hospital Complex(LHC) and the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).

Dead is Malvin Hartman, of Coomaka Mines, Region Ten.  The youngest of five siblings, had he lived, he would have turned three today.   His father, Henry Hartman, 32, and mother Suzette, 30, along with Malvin’s nephew Ulric, were rushed to theatre at the LHC, where, late yesterday doctors were battling to save their lives.   The couple suffered severe head injuries and broken limbs, while Ulric sustained a fractured hip and fractured legs, relatives said. The accident happened around 6:30hrs as the bus was travelling from Coomaka Mines to Linden.

All others injured (including the four Hartman siblings), were transferred to the GPH where they are being treated for multiple injuries. Marvin Hartman was admitted unconscious; Marissa, Malcolm and Myer Hartman – admitted with multiple injuries; Linden Daw, 42 – injuries to the head and face; Shevon Cobis, 16 – a broken right leg; Alicia Bristol,15 – injury to the leg;  Peter De Clou, in his fifties – a fractured right hand and cuts to his face.
A thirteen- year-old girl, whose family name was given as Kaiser, was also transferred to Georgetown with injuries to the foot.

Relatives of the injured said that, based on reports given by the survivors who were able to speak, the bus, driven by Henry Martman, and carrying about 14 persons, had left Coomaka Mines, where all the occupants live, and was travelling to Linden. They recalled that, as the bus approached the Surapana junction, a truck swerved from a canter which was trying to overtake it, and collided with the  bus.  The three-year-old was killed on the spot, relatives said.

There was hysteria at the scene of the accident and at the Linden Hospital, as civic-minded persons turned out in their numbers to rescue the injured persons. As word quickly spread around the communities of Linden and Coomaka Mines, practically the whole of Coomaka Mines ‘downed tools’ and hurried down to the hospital in a moving show of sympathy.

At the Linden Hospital Complex were several tearful and grieving groups of relatives and friends from Coomaka Mines huddled together and praying for the recovery of the injured persons.

Meanwhile, the driver of the truck, whose name was given as Bakker, was taken in to police custody and his vehicle impounded.

Yesterday’s fatal accident at Mackenzie came exactly one week after the horrific accident on Homestretch Avenue in the city, which claimed the lives of five persons and injured about ten others.