An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“I need a Gideon boot and a kha­ki suit...”

Blink­ing back tears as he rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and launched in­to the rasta­far­i­an an­them Gideon Boot by Richie Spice, Omar McIn­tyre yes­ter­day mourned, “It ain’t feel good...some­body is miss­ing.”

Ad­mit­ting the trag­ic loss of his nephew Gideon Smart hours be­fore had left a hole in their lives, he re­called, “I al­ways pass and rub he head and I does sing that for him...he is a Gideon boots and a kha­ki suit!”

“Now, is no more ah he...so how we go­ing and deal with it?”

Smart, eight, of Sa­van­nah Road, Arou­ca, was killed af­ter a run­away truck slammed in­to him as he played on an ex­er­cise bi­cy­cle un­der his par­ents’ home around 3 pm on De­cem­ber 29.

The in­ci­dent left Smart’s par­ents, sib­lings, rel­a­tives and even neigh­bours won­der­ing if the sit­u­a­tion could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly.

Throw­ing out var­i­ous sug­ges­tions yes­ter­day as to how the tragedy may have been avoid­ed, McIn­tyre, along with sev­er­al men in the com­mu­ni­ty, be­lieved the dri­ver could have done more to avoid crash­ing in­to Smart.

No longer look­ing for­ward to New Year’s Day to­mor­row, McIn­tyre cried, “Now we in the new year with­out we old friend Gideon.”

Con­firm­ing Smart was a joy­ful, help­ful child who was al­ways rush­ing to help any­one, he said while they are griev­ing, they would not be blam­ing any­one.

“But he coul­da do bet­ter than that.”

“Yuh start off up the hill, and it have a drain you cud­da run in. It have all them ve­hi­cles yuh cud­da mash up. Yuh cud­da bank that truck any­where.”

McIn­tyre ac­knowl­edged the dri­ver may have pan­icked and was prob­a­bly not ex­pe­ri­enced enough to con­trol the three-ton truck, which had been loaded with con­crete blocks and oth­er build­ing sup­plies on the steep hill.

Even though the dri­ver suf­fered a bro­ken leg af­ter he was pinned be­hind the wheel, McIn­tyre said, “This ain’t go­ing to be a good new year for us.”

How­ev­er, he said, “God is good, and we had­da leave it in his hands. We just have to leave it for he to han­dle. He go fin­ish it.”

He lament­ed, though, that it was not the first time that this sit­u­a­tion had oc­curred.

Cit­ing two pre­vi­ous in­stances, he said a garbage truck and a car had al­so suf­fered me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties nav­i­gat­ing the steep hill, but the dri­vers were able to avoid ma­jor dam­age to prop­er­ty and in­jury to peo­ple.

In Smart’s case, he ar­gued this was a mat­ter of “fate.”

“Gideon live he life, and if that is what he was sup­posed to go through, that’s how God put it. If he was to be liv­ing still, he woul­da be liv­ing to­day. He migh­ta get a break foot or break hand, but he woul­da be liv­ing still. He time did reach so yuh cyar vex with God for that, and yuh cyar vex with no­body.”

“I ain’t even vex with the dri­ver be­cause at the end of the day, he tried he best.”

De­spite this, McIn­tyre hoped the po­lice ad­min­is­tered a breathal­yser to the dri­ver as he said, “Yuh know this is the time of the sea­son and every­body does be en­joy­ing them­self.”

He al­so said the ac­ci­dent had left his el­der broth­er and Smart’s step­fa­ther, Mar­tin Gar­den­er, with­out an in­come.

He said Gar­den­er’s maxi and pri­vate car, which he us­es to drop and pick up school chil­dren, had both been dam­aged dur­ing the ac­ci­dent.

Break­ing down soon af­ter he be­gan talk­ing about the tragedy, the step­fa­ther turned away as he wept.

Gaz­ing up­on the spot where Smart had died, he said the griev­ing moth­er had not been able to sleep at all on Mon­day night.

“She just keep jump­ing up and cry­ing,” he shared.

Sev­er­al men gath­ered un­der a near­by house ex­pressed anger as they too said the fa­tal ac­ci­dent could have been avoid­ed.

One man whose son is 12 years old, said, “If that was my child...I sure telling yuh it woul­da not been he alone ly­ing down dey.”

They blast­ed MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les for the over­grown play park a short dis­tance away, as they said the swings and slides were bro­ken and dan­ger­ous for the chil­dren to play on.

Claim­ing they had been the ones to cut the grass sev­er­al weeks ago so the neigh­bour­hood young­sters could play foot­ball and ex­er­cise, the men be­lieve that if the park was prop­er­ly main­tained, the chil­dren would be able to play safe­ly in­stead of on the road.