TWO men perished and five persons were hospitalised – three of them in critical condition, following a head-on collision yesterday between two vehicles on the Bath Settlement Public Road.
The collision reportedly occurred shortly before 14:00hrs.Dead are Nero Bankay, 24, of Lot 21 Bush Lot, West Berbice and Shiv Persaud, 48, also of Bush Lot.

Bankay, the driver, and Persaud, who only recently remigrated home from Canada, were burnt beyond recognition when the vehicle in which they were travelling, an MR5 Spyder, toppled a number of times after the collision, then burst into flames.
Public-spirited citizens who rushed to put out the blaze were able to do so only after about 10 minutes, by which time both men had been incinerated.
Three passengers from the other vehicle, HC 5367, namely: Rookmanie Trotman, 47, of Bennett Dam, Rosignol; Carmen Marks (only information given), and Phyllis Corlette, 41, of Cumberland, East Berbice, were rushed from the Fort Wellington Hospital to the Georgetown Hospital in a critical condition.
Fiona Rassoul, 32, of Canefield, Canje, and Nigel Trotz, the driver of the hire car, aged 34 and of Cumberland were referred to the New Amsterdam Hospital for further treatment.
Eyewitnesses say the ‘Spyder’ was proceeding in an easterly direction, while the hire car, driven by Trotz was travelling in a westerly direction when the collision occurred.
On scene, the Guyana Chronicle observed that the collision occurred on the southern carriageway, which seems to suggest that the ‘Spyder’ must have strayed into the lane of the approaching hire car.
Nero Bankay was a popular ‘body-work’ mechanic at Bush Lot. According to Dr Vish Persaud, a relative of the now dead Shiv Persaud,the man had only two weeks ago returned home to Guyana to take up residence, after living in Canada for 30 years or more.

Dr Persaud said his relative had, just the night before, attended a family reunion, and had only yesterday, around midday, fixed some defects on the ‘Spyder’, as he was a mechanic by profession.
He, however, had not yet acquired his local driver’s licence, so he approached Bankay to test-drive the vehicle.
Dr Persaud said the accident occurred while the vehicle was apparently under test.
People living in the vicinity were startled by the sound of the impact and the sight of the ‘Spyder’ catapulting into the air and then bursting into flames.
Others said that the vehicle was travelling at a rapid rate when the collision occurred.
The police said crime scene investigators had been mobilised to do a thorough check on the vehicle to see if anything incendiary in it could have caused the explosion and flames.
Up to the time of reporting, the charred remains of the two men had not yet been extricated from the badly damaged motor car.

By Clifford Stanley