A grieving mother says she begged her 16-year-old son not to leave home shortly before a crash along the Corentyne Public Road claimed his life and those of two other young men on Tuesday afternoon.
Porshatam Hoolasia, called “Suren,” was a passenger in motor car PLL 4312, driven by 19-year-old Ameer Khan, along with 23-year-old Priyas Mursalin, when the vehicle became involved in a head-on collision along the Madia Farm Public Road, Corentyne, Berbice.
His mother, Shivani Subramani, recalled warning her son before he left the house.
“The person come here and call on him and me tell him don’t go. He tell me, ‘Mommy, I’m just going to help them.’ Anybody call him for help, he always did it. He was willing to help anybody,” she said.
Subramani said her son promised he would return shortly.
“I tell him don’t go, and he say, ‘Mommy, I’m just going to help him and come back by 4:30.’”
Moments after entering the car, the teenager unexpectedly returned home to retrieve his cellphone, reviving an old superstition in many Guyanese households that turning back after beginning a journey is a sign of bad luck.
“When he go in the car, he come out back. So I ask him, ‘You ain’t gone yet?’ He say, ‘Mommy, no, I left home my life.’ I ask him where is your life, and he say, ‘My phone.’”
About half an hour later, the family received news of the accident.
“At the hospital, the doctor tell me to go and see if any of them was my son. When I look, I tell them none of them is my son. They said only two bodies they receive,” Subramani said.
She later learned her son had remained trapped in the wreckage.
“When I come out, somebody tell me my son pinned down in the car. A neighbour carry me to the scene. They had him on the ground covered with a sheet,” she said.
“I ask them to open it and let me see if it was him. After that, I start to blackout. I start to holler.”
Subramani described her son as caring and respectful and said he had dreamed of one day working with ExxonMobil Guyana.
Police said Khan was reportedly attempting to overtake another vehicle when he entered the path of an oncoming car driven by 44-year-old Ramesh Aravanan, resulting in the head-on collision. The vehicle Khan was driving then crashed into a Guyana Power and Light (GPL) utility pole.
The injured were taken to the Port Mourant Public Hospital, where Khan, Mursalin and Hoolasia were pronounced dead. Aravanan was treated and later discharged.
Police investigations into the fatal accident are ongoing.
