By Shirley Thomas

THE policeman who was struck down by a Canter truck on the Eccles Public Road on Monday while he was directing traffic to see schoolchildren safely across the road has succumbed.

Dead is Constable Kelvin La Fleur, 25, of Demerara Road, Lamaha Springs.  The injured policeman’s condition deteriorated while he was at his parents’ home on Thursday, and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital around mid-afternoon.

After being struck down on Monday, La Fleur was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) suffering multiple injuries to his head, a broken right leg, other injuries to his left leg and trauma to his chest.

The driver of the vehicle was taken into custody to assist with the police investigation. It is expected that he will now face a number of charges, including causing death by dangerous driving.

Reports are that La Fleur had his hands and legs X-rayed, but there was no scanning of his chest so that injuries to that region were not immediately picked up and were therefore left unattended.

Admitted on Monday, the policeman was warded at the institution for two days and discharged on Wednesday. But it was not long before he began complaining for severe chest pains, headaches and pains in the neck. As the pains grew unbearable, he begged his mother to call the police ambulance to take him back to hospital.

Relatives and friends of the dead policeman said that they began calling for the ambulance since Wednesday afternoon, and it was not until yesterday morning that the police ambulance turned up at his home.

Meanwhile, relatives are incensed that when the ambulance turned up for the patient at his Lamaha Springs home, instead of taking him straight to the hospital, it first took him to Brickdam Police Station, then back to the  scene of the accident at Eccles before going to the hospital.

Hours leading up to his death, relatives say, La Fleur kept crying out for pains in the chest and grew restless.  Gripped by pains, he kept crying out for his mother, even as she held his hands and begged him not to leave her.  As he groaned and rolled, his tearful mother said she tried everything she considered possible to sustain him.

“I was holding his hands when it appeared he breathed his last,”  the sorrowful mother recalled.

But persons who feel the loss of the policeman have expressed disappointment and consider it insensitive that those deploying the ambulance to transport the patient in distress, did not see it necessary to immediately rush him to hospital as a matter of urgency.

“We think that the patient’s health should have taken precedence, and not left to chance,” they contended.

La Fleur, who was stationed at the Providence Police Station, had been a member of the Police Force for the last eight years. He is survived by his two children, his mother Claudette Taylor and father Kenrick La Fleur, one brother, one sister and other relatives.