Driver flees after sand truck kills Barama security guard

Jan 26, 2012 News

A security guard living along the Kuru Kururu, Soesdyke/Linden Highway, has become the country’s

Dead: Ronville Roberts

latest road fatality after he became a victim of a hit-and-run accident.
Ronville Roberts, 58, called ‘Robbie’ was pronounced dead yesterday morning at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
At around 08:00 hours yesterday, the man was struck down by a sand truck mere minutes away from his home at Kuru Kururu. The dead man’s wife, Ingrid Schmidt, told this publication that she last saw her husband on Tuesday afternoon when he left for work. Her husband was employed with COPS Security and was attached to the Barama Plywood Factory, Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara. Roberts would usually ride his bicycle to work from Kuru Kururu to Land of Canaan.
Schmidt was at home assisting her grandchildren to get ready for school when she received the news that her husband was involved in an accident. A lad from the community who saw the accident took the news to Roberts’ family. Schmidt said herself and other family members immediately raced out to the public road where the incident occurred.
“When we reach out to the road head, we see a crowd and we see his bicycle on the road in pieces,” Schmidt said. She added that by that time public-spirited citizens had summoned a car to take her injured husband to the hospital.
By that time too, the truck which carries the name ‘Zion’ on the front, had already fled the scene. Roberts was rushed to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre where he was treated and transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital. The man’s wife said while on Mandela Avenue her husband started panting for breath.
“He start breathing hard and the nurse ask the ambulance driver how long more it got before they reach the hospital because it ain’t look like Robbie gon make it.”
He died a few minutes later.
“The people say it was a big green sand truck, marked Zion, and it reverse on he and after the man realize that he knock somebody he just drive away,” an eyewitness said.
Meanwhile, she related that an x-ray which was done on her husband while he was being treated at the Diamond Diagnostic Centre revealed that his hip bone had “shifted”, puncturing his lungs. Describing her husband’s injury, the woman said her husband was “split from between his legs.
This publication was told that the truck was later found abandoned further up the Linden/ Soesdyke highway.
The driver was nowhere to be found.