A HORSE wandering along the Zeelugt Public Road, West Coast Demerara was last Saturday afternoon hit by a speeding motorcar and flung several feet away, slamming into a 13-year-old boy who had tried to jump away from the car. But it was too late. 

In a freaky chain of events, the horse was flung several feet away and slammed into the child, who was hurled into the air before landing on the roadway badly injured.
The child, Wayne Noel, of Zeelugt North, East Bank Essequibo, and a student of Saraswat Primary School, at De Willem, was picked up and rushed first to the Leonora Cottage Hospital, before being transferred to the West Demerara Regional Hospital, and finally to the Georgetown Public Hospital by ambulance.

He was admitted suffering injuries to his head, face and back; and a blow to his lower spinal area which is severely swollen. He was also getting seizures while at the Leonora Cottage hospital. At the GPHC, a CT-scan was done, and the results will be released to his parents later.
Witnesses say the horse was killed on the spot and was lying in a pool of blood on the road with its entrails dislodged. But less than 20 minutes later the boy’s parents arrived on the scene and the vehicle was taken away while the horse was still lying dead on the roadway.
The child’s deeply distraught father, Noel, recalled that around 14:00 hrs, Wayne had asked to be allowed to visit a friend living a short distance away. With his permission, the child left, and by 16:00 hrs, as he was making his way back home he was involved in the freak accident.
Even as Wayne remains warded at the GPHC, his life in the balance, the horse has still not been claimed and the car remains in the custody of the West Demerara Police.

(By Shirley Thomas)