Two killed in separate road accidents

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Two peo­ple were killed in sep­a­rate road traf­fic ac­ci­dents be­tween Fri­day night and Sat­ur­day morn­ing, with the lat­est fa­tal­i­ty oc­cur­ring near the San­ta Philli­pa Bridge along the Ca­paro Val­ley Bras­so Road.

The vic­tim in Sat­ur­day's ac­ci­dent was iden­ti­fied as 42-year-old Ja­son Ram­nanan of Ca­paro.

Po­lice said the ac­ci­dent hap­pened around 9 a.m. when Ram­nanan's pan­el van col­lid­ed with a truck near the bridge.

His sis­ter, Aman­da Ram­nanan, de­scribed him as a de­vot­ed fam­i­ly mem­ber whose death has dev­as­tat­ed rel­a­tives.

"Ja­son was the most loved in­di­vid­ual and the most car­ing boy if you ever met him, and he had his whole life ahead of him still," she said.

She said Ram­nanan had cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day on Jan­u­ary 15 and had been re­turn­ing home af­ter vis­it­ing his grand­par­ents, who live in the area.

Res­i­dents who gath­ered at the scene claimed on­go­ing road­works may have con­tributed to the crash. They said the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had ex­ca­vat­ed a sec­tion of the road­way about a week ago, leav­ing what they de­scribed as a large hole near the bridge.

Ac­cord­ing to one res­i­dent, bar­ri­cades placed around the ex­ca­va­tion re­duce vis­i­bil­i­ty for mo­torists ap­proach­ing the bridge.

"There is a bar­ri­cade around the hole on the pave­ment so usu­al­ly when you come around the cor­ner, you can­not see where the pave­ment break. There is a big hole and WASA should have cov­ered that hole," the res­i­dent said.

The res­i­dent added that a waste dis­pos­al truck had al­ready crossed the bridge and had the right of way when the col­li­sion oc­curred.

Ear­li­er, on Fri­day night, an uniden­ti­fied man be­lieved to be home­less was killed af­ter be­ing struck by an un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cle along the south­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way near Home and Be­yond.

Po­lice said the ac­ci­dent oc­curred at about 9.40 p.m.

The dri­ver, a 28-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer at­tached to the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment's Crime Re­sponse Unit, told in­ves­ti­ga­tors he was on ex­er­cise du­ty and dri­ving south when a man sud­den­ly ap­peared in front of the ve­hi­cle.

He re­port­ed that he was un­able to stop in time and struck the pedes­tri­an.

Re­spond­ing of­fi­cers found the vic­tim ly­ing mo­tion­less on the road­way with cat­a­stroph­ic in­juries. A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer lat­er pro­nounced him dead and or­dered a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

The of­fi­cer was treat­ed by am­bu­lance per­son­nel fol­low­ing the col­li­sion.

Po­lice con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate both fa­tal ac­ci­dents.