A three-year-old toddler, struck down by a speeding motor car outside of his home at East Ruimveldt yesterday morning was pronounced dead on arrival at the Woodlands Hospital in the city. Dead is Carlyle Moe, of 49 East Ruimveldt, the only child for his mother, Eartha Roach, an employee of Maggie’s Snackette. He reportedly suffered a broken neck and severe head injuries.
Deep anguish prevailed at the home of the bereaved family yesterday, where there wasn’t a dry eye, as the child’s distraught mother and other family members related the story of how he met his death.
Roach recalled that around 10:30hrs, she was in the house when she heard a loud impact and simultaneous screams by others outside. She ran outside to find that her son had been struck down by a speeding motor vehicle which had just come out of Pineappple Street and was heading west along East Front Road.
Witnesses said that the accident occurred when the car swerved onto the parapet to avoid a collision with another vehicle heading in the opposite direction, and ploughed into the child.
On impact, they said, the toddler was flung about 45 to 50ft away, and landed in some mud at the side of the road. When this newspaper visited the scene, the child’s slipper was still stuck in the mud.
The driver of the vehicle, whose name was given as Marlon Humphrey, witnesses said, did not immediately stop, but drove away, turned south into a nearby street and west again when he was stopped by a public-spirited motorist.
Meanwhile, the hysterical mother pleaded with the man who had struck down her child to take him to hospital, but he refused, saying that he could not move the car before the police got there.
Ironically she said, it was the driver of the vehicle Humphrey was trying to avoid hitting which took her and the injured child to the Woodlands Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
The mother said the motorist who struck her child down said he thought it was a dog he had hit, and so did not stop his car to enquire.