“Aye what time we go reach home? 12 o’clock tonight, Toco we dey you know,” were the last words of Gasparillo father of two Sharaz Mohammed on a Facebook Live during an excursion on Saturday.
Unfortunately, Mohammed never made it back home.
On the way back from Toco, he was struck down and killed by a van along the Valencia Main Road sometime after 9 pm.
The 35-year-old father of two had gone on the excursion with family and friends. They were in two buses.
Speaking with reporters at their Goodman Street home yesterday, Mohammed’s father Russel Mohammed, 58, said he was the eldest of his three sons and the project manager of his (Russel) scaffolding business.
He said he was told that the buses stopped at a bar on the way back for them to use the washroom, which was where his daughter-in-law was when the accident occurred.
Russel said: “What I heard is that he ran across the road, and this big off-road van was coming up the road and hit him and throw him away.”
He said the police contacted him around 9.45 pm with the tragic news.
“I called my next son and we proceeded to the site and when we reach up there we saw the body lying on the road badly bruised, all his leg was break.”
The father said the driver was at the scene being interviewed by the police and he asked him what happened.
“He told me that he tried his best to shy away from hitting him but he had no other choice.”
Noting that the speed limit on that stretch is 50 miles per hour, the father appealed to drivers to exercise caution, especially when there are a lot of people on the road.
“Them drivers have to be a little more, you see two big bus and a set of people and that speeding because other people saw the van with speed coming up the road.”
He said the van was heavily tinted and his other son took photos of it but the police told them that he was committing an offence and made them delete the photos.
The father said everyone loved Mohammed, who also used to play tassa and music. He said he was planning to retire and leave his business to his children.
Mohammed was expected to travel to Guyana next week to open a branch and manage it. He said his son also planned to build a house for his daughter and son, ages 10 and 11, and his wife.
Meanwhile, the police questioned the driver and released him pending further investigations.