RALPH BAN­WARIE

An­oth­er cy­clist has been killed in a hit and run ac­ci­dent ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing while cy­cling along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in the vicin­i­ty of the Cu­mu­to traf­fic lights. This is the eighth cy­clist to be killed for this year while rid­ing along the na­tion's high­ways.

The cy­clist, whose name was giv­en as Aaron Thomas, 40, died in­stant­ly af­ter be­ing hit by a pick­up.

Eye­wit­ness­es told the Sun­day Guardian that around 8 am yes­ter­day, Thomas and a group of cy­clists were rid­ing West along the high­way, he was ahead of the group, when reach­ing the vicin­i­ty of Cu­mu­to in­ter­sec­tion, the dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle ap­par­ent­ly broke the red light in the vicin­i­ty of Cu­mu­to and came in­to con­tact with Thomas who was flung in­to the air and died up­on im­pact. The dri­ver failed to stop and Thomas' cy­cle was a to­tal wreck.

Po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed along with an EHS am­bu­lance and they re­port­ed see­ing the cy­clist ly­ing on the side of the high­way dead.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer vis­it­ed the scene, viewed the body and or­dered its re­moval to the Ari­ma Mor­tu­ary from where it will be tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, for a post-mortem to de­ter­mine the cause of death.

Po­lice dis­cov­ered a ve­hi­cle which was be­lieved to be in­volved in the ac­ci­dent aban­doned along the high­way. The dri­ver was nowhere to be found.

On­ly a few weeks ago, on No­vem­ber 10, two cy­clists were killed in an ear­ly morn­ing ride along the Beetham High­way when a car ploughed in­to their group.

Cy­clists Joan­na Banks, 40, a man­ag­er at BP and Joe Brown, Chef at Jaf­fa Restau­rant at the Queen's Park Oval died in that ac­ci­dent. They were mem­bers of the Slip­stream Cy­cling Club.

Oth­er cy­clists who were in the group in yes­ter­day's ac­ci­dent were re­port­ed to be trau­ma­tised and were seen plac­ing their bi­cy­cles in­to sup­port ve­hi­cles as they re­fused to con­tin­ue cy­cling along the high­way.

One cy­clist said that was the end of road cy­cling for him.

As a re­sult of the for­mer ac­ci­dents, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan was mak­ing ef­forts to re­vise the laws for cy­clists us­ing the high­ways.

Po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Cu­mu­to Po­lice Sta­tion are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.