An­na-Lisa Paul

The man re­spon­si­ble for Tues­day's ac­ci­dent in El Do­ra­do in which five peo­ple lost their lives will ap­pear in court on Mon­day charged with five of­fences. The 25-year-old ma­son of Tacarigua will ap­pear be­fore a Tu­na­puna mag­is­trate charged with four counts of death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving and one count of dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

The five charges were laid by Sgt Mark Ma­haraj, of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, fol­low­ing in­struc­tions by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard, yes­ter­day. Se­nior of­fi­cials said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­tin­u­ing to iden­ti­fy the fifth per­son killed and that an ad­di­tion­al charge of death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving would be laid af­ter the vic­tim was iden­ti­fied.

Around 5.30 am on June 19, the dri­ver was head­ing east along the East­ern Main Road near the El Do­ra­do Co-op­er­a­tive when he swerved to avoid hit­ting an on­com­ing ve­hi­cle and ploughed in­to the Palance Bar, killing five peo­ple and in­jur­ing oth­ers.

Those killed in the ac­ci­dent were Shi­va Bharath, 27, of Ca­roni; Shayaz Khan, 25, and his moth­er, Chris­tine, 51 of McKen­zie Street, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni; Har­ry­lal Mon­groo, 31, of Ma­haraj Street, Five Rivers, and an uniden­ti­fied African male. Of­fi­cers re­newed a call yes­ter­day for the pub­lic's help to iden­ti­fy the fifth vic­tim. The con­tact num­ber at the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion is 662-4978.