Paul Nanan had been count­ing down the days to Christ­mas. His heart was full of hope as he bus­ied him­self work­ing hard with the hope that his two chil­dren would fi­nal­ly come to live with him.

But that dream would nev­er ma­te­ri­alise.

Ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way near In­di­an Trail, the car Nanan was trav­el­ling in veered off the road and crashed in­to a ditch, end­ing his life.

Nanan had been in the pas­sen­ger seat, and his girl­friend, An­gel Alex­is Dy­er, lay bleed­ing be­side him in the dri­ver’s seat.

They had been re­turn­ing home from the Ma­coya Mar­ket, and Dy­er’s car was filled with fresh veg­eta­bles. It had been a long night. Nanan had worked the day be­fore in his stall and strug­gled to find some­one to dri­ve him to the mar­ket. When no one was avail­able, Dy­er of­fered to help.

Po­lice said around 5 am, High­way Pa­trol of­fi­cers PC Boodoo and PC Bridge­mo­han re­spond­ed to the scene and found Dy­er’s white Nis­san Ver­sa, crum­pled in a ditch on the south­bound lane.

She was con­scious, though in­jured. She told po­lice she had lost con­trol of the car around 4.50 am while head­ing south. Both she and Nanan were rushed to the Cou­va Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal af­ter emer­gency crews pulled them from the wreck. But de­spite every ef­fort, Nanan didn’t make it.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, his broth­er, Kyle Nanan, said he saw Nanan tak­ing his last breath.

“When we got there, I saw my broth­er ly­ing there — gasp­ing, groan­ing,” he re­called. “They were wait­ing to take him to the hos­pi­tal.”

He said his broth­er nev­er shied away from hard work. Nanan, he said, was usu­al­ly up be­fore dawn, run­ning his mar­ket stall, do­ing what­ev­er it took to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly. “He was mak­ing plans for the new year,” Kyle said. “He want­ed to bring his chil­dren home.”

Kyle said Nanan and their broth­er Richie were al­ways do­ing every­thing to­geth­er.

“We grew up to­geth­er, sell­ing veg­eta­bles,” Kyle said, “Christ­mas was al­ways our time — the busiest time. That’s when we’d make a lit­tle mon­ey.”

Now, in­stead of prepar­ing for the hol­i­days, he said his fam­i­ly is prepar­ing for a fu­ner­al.

Paul’s moth­er, Shelly Nanan, flew in from To­ba­go but was too dis­traught to speak.

An au­top­sy is sched­uled for to­day, af­ter which the fam­i­ly will fi­nalise his fu­ner­al arrange­ments. —RDS