Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The man­age­ment of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) yes­ter­day reached out and of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of teenag­er Lysanne Julien, 19, fol­low­ing her death in an ear­ly morn­ing ac­ci­dent in Port-of-Spain.

Julien died af­ter the ve­hi­cle she was in was in­volved in an ac­ci­dent with a PTSC bus at the Park and Hen­ry streets in­ter­sec­tion.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, PTSC gen­er­al man­ag­er Patrick Gomez told Guardian Me­dia: “We are still in­ves­ti­gat­ing all the cir­cum­stances. We are work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties, the po­lice and the dri­ver is cur­rent­ly giv­ing a state­ment at the po­lice sta­tion. But we are still gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion at this stage.”

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 3.45 am, the dri­ver of a Hon­da Vezel was head­ing east along Park Street when the ve­hi­cle was struck by a PTSC bus head­ing north along Hen­ry Street. The bus was mak­ing its first trip to Blan­chisseuse.

The dri­ver, along with his four pas­sen­gers, was tak­en to the near­by Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where Julien was de­clared dead at around 5 am. Two oth­ers were re­port­ed as be­ing in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion yes­ter­day, while the dri­ver and an­oth­er pas­sen­ger es­caped with mi­nor in­juries.

Po­lice said the dri­ver of the SUV re­port­ed that he was in the left lane when he felt an im­pact to the right side of the ve­hi­cle, caus­ing him to lose con­trol and slam in­to a traf­fic light. The ve­hi­cle over­turned and land­ed on its left side along the side­walk.

Po­lice said the bus dri­ver was as­sist­ing them with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Three of the pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing Julien, were Is­land Beer Chill and Grill work­ers who were go­ing home af­ter work. The es­tab­lish­ment did not open for busi­ness yes­ter­day, as em­ploy­ees mourned Julien’s pass­ing.

This is the sec­ond fa­tal ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing a PTSC ve­hi­cle in re­cent weeks.

On Au­gust 19, Rox­anne Philip, along with bus dri­ver Mun­saf Khan, 48, died when the bus they were trav­el­ling in crashed along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Po­lice re­port­ed then that the dri­ver of a truck pulled out from the shoul­der of the high­way in­to the path of the bus be­ing dri­ven by Khan. Khan tried to avoid hit­ting the truck, but both ve­hi­cles col­lid­ed. Philip was thrown from the bus up­on im­pact, and Khan was pinned in­side the bus. Both died at the scene.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to that in­ci­dent is still on­go­ing.