An­na-Lisa Paul

Less than an hour af­ter leav­ing their homes in San­gre Grande to go to work, two neigh­bours were killed in a car ac­ci­dent that al­so claimed the life of the dri­ver. Dead are taxi dri­ver Nazarus Ali, 44; Rod­ney Singh, 34; and Lin­chan Ra­goo­bar, 52, all of Gen­da Road, Fish­ing Pond. Their deaths pushed the road fa­tal­i­ty fig­ure to 112 for the year.

Re­ports in­di­cate that around 5.45 am yes­ter­day, Ali was dri­ving his Toy­ota Corol­la west along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, when, on reach­ing Ja­cob Hill, Waller­field, he was in­volved in a col­li­sion with two ve­hi­cles head­ing in the same di­rec­tion. Ali then crashed in­to a util­i­ty pole. Ali, Singh and Ra­goo­bar died on the spot. A fourth pas­sen­ger, Nicholas Ram­dass, 19, al­so of Fish­ing Pond, was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured.

Ram­dass was tak­en to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, where he was treat­ed and lat­er trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex at Mt Hope. Up to last night, Ram­dass was said to be rest­ing in a sta­ble con­di­tion. Po­lice who vis­it­ed the scene yes­ter­day is­sued a warn­ing to mo­torists to ex­er­cise cau­tion when us­ing the na­tion's roads. Se­nior of­fi­cers told the T&T Guardian that ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions need to be car­ried out be­fore a de­fin­i­tive cause of the ac­ci­dent is de­ter­mined.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, the de­com­pos­ing body of a man re­port­ed miss­ing since Ju­ly 20 was found in Va­len­cia on Mon­day. Around 5 pm on Ju­ly 30, of­fi­cers from the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post were no­ti­fied that a man had been seen ly­ing in a drain along the East­ern Main Road. Po­lice iden­ti­fied the dead man as Andy Ali Bertram, 34, of Bertram Street, Va­len­cia.