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Saturday, July 26, 2025

2 burnt to death in exploding car

by

20140223

Five days af­ter Ke­sav Ra­goo, 20, sur­vived an ac­ci­dent which claimed the life of sol­dier Ju­nior La Bar­rie, he and one of his friends were burnt to death af­ter the car in which they were trav­el­ling crashed and burst in­to flames near their Freeport homes yes­ter­day.

Ra­goo, of Ram­dass Trace, La Que­sa, and his friend Shel­don Ram­di­al, 25, of Are­na Road, died on the spot. The sur­vivor, dri­ver and close friend Stef­fon Mad­ho, 20, of Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas, is list­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope.

The deaths of the young men plunged the close knit Freeport com­mu­ni­ty in­to mourn­ing.

Po­lice re­ports in­di­cate that Mad­ho was head­ing south along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way around 12.05 am, on his way to drop off Ra­goo and Ram­di­al at their re­spec­tive homes. While at­tempt­ing to en­ter the Freeport ex­it he lost con­trol of his white Nis­san B15 and the ve­hi­cle ran off the road, over­turned and burst in­to flames, trap­ping the pas­sen­gers in­side.

Ker­win Fras­er, who lives near­by, heard the loud sound and rushed to the scene, where he was able to res­cue Mad­ho be­fore the car be­came en­gulfed in flames. Fras­er said he crossed the road and saw the bon­net of the ve­hi­cle in flames. He saw the dri­ver at­tempt­ing to es­cape the burn­ing car and dragged him to safe­ty.

"He was se­vere­ly burnt," Fras­er said.

Fras­er said af­ter pulling Mad­ho to safe­ty, he heard some­thing like the honk­ing of a horn. On hear­ing this, a woman al­so at the scene asked if there were oth­er pas­sen­gers in the car.

"He start­ed call­ing out the names of the guys in the car and num­bers of their fam­i­lies, who to call, but by then it was to late. The en­tire car was en­gulfed. We could not res­cue them," Fras­er said.

Fire of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent were able to ex­tin­guish the fire.

Vil­lagers blamed the ac­ci­dent on a "bad dri­ve" from an­oth­er dri­ver.

Ra­goo's el­dest sis­ter Steffie Sinanan, 26, told the Sun­day Guardian her broth­er was the ba­by of the fam­i­ly, ex­plain­ing he was the youngest child and on­ly son.

An emo­tion­al Sinanan plead­ed with dri­vers to be more cau­tious and con­sid­er­ate to oth­ers on the road.

"Peo­ple have to be more care­ful and stop drink­ing and dri­ving," she said.

She said she last spoke to her broth­er around 7 pm on Fri­day. At the time, he told her he was wait­ing on Mad­ho to pick him up to go to Ch­agua­nas.

"Ke­sav would go out with his friends but he was not in­to drink­ing and par­ty­ing heav­i­ly."

Sinanan said last Mon­day Ra­goo sur­vived an ac­ci­dent near the Seer­am Broth­ers Ltd, Chase Vil­lage, a short dis­tance from where he died yes­ter­day. That ac­ci­dent claimed the life of La Bar­rie, who was a mem­ber of the T&T Reg­i­ment. La Bar­rie was buried on Fri­day.

Sinanan said Ra­goo's van was dam­aged by the car dri­ven by the 16 year-old boy who was charged in that in­ci­dent, but he walked away with­out any in­juries.

Ra­goo was a stu­dent at the Met­al In­dus­try Com­pa­ny, Point-a-Pierre, and was two months away from grad­u­at­ing. One of his class­mates and friend, Kaleem Mo­hammed, de­scribed him as a cheer­ful and hap­py per­son.

"He al­ways knew how to make every­one laugh. I was look­ing for­ward to cel­e­brat­ing my birth­day with him on Sun­day," Mo­hammed said.

The Ram­di­al fam­i­ly asked that the me­dia re­spect their right to mourn in pri­vate yes­ter­day.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands Ram­di­al was al­so the on­ly son to his par­ents and the youngest of his sib­lings. He was self em­ployed

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment and MP for the area, Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, vis­it­ed both fam­i­lies dur­ing a walk­a­bout in the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day and ex­pressed his con­do­lences.

"We have lost two very bright and promis­ing young men in the com­mu­ni­ty," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh pledged the full sup­port of his min­istry to both fam­i­lies, say­ing coun­sel­ing and fu­ner­al grants would be made avail­able if need­ed.

In a sep­a­rate ac­ci­dent in Man­zanil­la, Kevin Forde, 28, was killed when the Hyundai Ma­trix he was a pas­sen­ger in ran off the Man­zanil­la/ Ma­yaro Road around 7 pm on Fri­day.

Po­lice re­ports state that the dri­ver of the Ma­trix at­tempt­ed to over­take an­oth­er ve­hi­cle along the road when a tyre blew out. He lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle, which over­turned and hit a co­conut tree. Forde was pro­nounced dead at the scene. The dri­ver and two oth­er oc­cu­pants, whose iden­ti­ties are still un­known, were tak­en to San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal where they were ward­ed yes­ter­day


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