RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) and po­lice are prob­ing an in­ci­dent in which a man was crushed by a bus out­side City Gate in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day evening.

The man re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to late yes­ter­day. Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at 7 pm, a 40-year-old bus dri­ver was dri­ving the PTSC bus along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route when he no­ticed some­thing ly­ing in the mid­dle of the lane di­rect­ly in the path of his bus a short dis­tance away from City Gate.

Some 66 pas­sen­gers were on the bus at the time.

The dri­ver told po­lice that out of con­cern for the pas­sen­gers on board, he could not swerve away, so he ap­plied brakes im­me­di­ate­ly but still came in­to con­tact with what he thought was an ob­ject.

On check­ing, the bus dri­ver re­alised it was a man ly­ing on the road and he had been crushed by the bus.

A state­ment from PTSC yes­ter­day said the dri­ver re­port­ed what had hap­pened to WPC Au­gus­tine, a city po­lice of­fi­cer as­signed to City Hall, Port-of-Spain, who then con­tact­ed of­fi­cers from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Po­lice said the uniden­ti­fied man’s head and feet were crushed and there were mul­ti­ple se­ri­ous in­juries about his en­tire body.

The man is of African de­scent, has a brown com­plex­ion and was wear­ing a black jer­sey and three-quar­ter jeans.

The bus dri­ver is said to be very trau­ma­tised and is ex­pect­ed to give an of­fi­cial state­ment to the po­lice to­day.

In a state­ment, PTSC said it was aware of the in­ci­dent and was as­sist­ing the po­lice with their probe.

“We are ful­ly co­op­er­at­ing with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties as they car­ry out a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent.”

CCTV footage has been re­quest­ed as part of the po­lice’s on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent.