Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­ly of a man who drowned af­ter his ve­hi­cle was swept away by flood­wa­ters along the M1 Ring Road is warn­ing the pub­lic to avoid tra­vers­ing through floods.

Af­ter spend­ing some 20 years sav­ing lives as an emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian (EMT), An­nan Boysie, 40, was un­able to save him­self on Thurs­day evening, af­ter he was swept away in his pick­up while at­tempt­ing to cross the flood­ed road­way near the Cedar Hill Es­tate Road. Al­though by­standers at­tempt­ed to res­cue him, it wouldn’t be un­til lat­er that night that fire of­fi­cers pulled his ve­hi­cle and corpse from the riv­er. He was found in the back­seat of the van.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at his Cedar Dri­ve, La Coste­na Gar­dens home yes­ter­day, his younger broth­er, Den­ish Boysie, is­sued the ad­vice to cit­i­zens.

“Al­ways take cau­tion. Don’t go through flood­wa­ters. I ad­vise every­body not to dri­ve (through the wa­ters), re­gard­less (of) what type of ve­hi­cle you in be­cause you nev­er know the pres­sure of the wa­ter, the height of the wa­ter, where the road lev­el is. So just be care­ful,” he said.

He added, “Safe­guard your­self be­cause you nev­er know- to­day you here, to­mor­row, some­thing could hap­pen.”

Den­ish was un­able to say if this was his broth­er’s first time at­tempt­ing to dri­ve through flood­wa­ters. How­ev­er, he be­lieves his broth­er was ex­haust­ed from work and just want­ed to get home.

“I would think, you know, some­times in the cir­cum­stances, you tired from work—be­cause he was com­ing home from work —he just want to reach home. As he liv­ing Princes Town, he prob­a­bly ain’t think the wa­ter would be so high or the...vol­ume of the wa­ter, so he just dri­ve through and you know you not think­ing prop­er­ly. You just tired,” he said.

He be­lieves his broth­er may have felt con­fi­dent to ven­ture through the wa­ters be­cause he was dri­ving a four-wheel dri­ve pick­up.

“Most peo­ple with 4x4 or high ve­hi­cles would think, okay, they could take a chance and go through. So that prob­a­bly went through his mind. He just want to reach home,” he said.

Al­though they didn’t live to­geth­er, Den­ish said he loved his broth­er and re­mem­bered the last time he saw him.

“It was a prayers with one of my grand aunts. We were all to­geth­er, the fam­i­ly was to­geth­er,” Den­ish said.

“It was nice to see him smile and be­ing with the fam­i­ly. (He was) very pleas­ant, very hap­py.”

While news broke last night of An­nan’s ac­ci­dent, Den­ish said the fam­i­ly didn’t find out un­til yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter read­ing the re­ports.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day, Di­nesh had just ar­rived from com­plet­ing the pa­per­work so they could make fu­ner­al arrange­ments. He said the au­top­sy is card­ed for Mon­day. Once it is com­plet­ed and the all-clear is giv­en, he said the fam­i­ly may pro­ceed with the fu­ner­al on Tues­day un­der Hin­du rites.