Police are investigating an incident in which a two-year-old girl from Bamboo Settlement, Valsayn, was accidentally crushed to death under her father’s van last week.
According to reports, the incident occurred around 7 pm on October 15, when Sabella Beharry, of Nabbie Street, Bamboo Settlement No 2, and her mother and father were preparing to go out to buy dinner.
Police said Beharry was waiting with her mother in the family’s front porch as her father was turning his pick-up truck in the yard. The child’s mother then went back inside for her milk bottle.
Left momentarily unattended, Beharry reportedly ran out of the porch and towards her father’s reversing vehicle. She was knocked down and her head was crushed under the rear tyre of the vehicle.
Her father told police that he initially believed he had hit a large rock, but was alerted to the tragic accident by the wails of his wife, who came outside to find her daughter’s body under the vehicle.
Beharry was taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, where she succumbed to her injuries last Friday.
A post-mortem was performed on her body at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday.
Emotional relatives who went to identify her body and view the autopsy refused to speak with media personnel.
Beharry’s parents, who are said to be traumatised by the incident, were questioned by investigators from the St Joseph Police Station.
Investigators said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions will decide if the parents should be charged with negligence once the investigation is completed. However, they said charges were unlikely.
Beharry’s death is the second time in a little over a year that a toddler was killed by her parents’ vehicle in a freak accident.
In September last year, one-and-a-half-year-old Salsabila Mohammed was crushed under her father Ashmeed’s van at their Charlieville, Chaguanas, home in similar circumstances. Mohammed was raking leaves with her mother when she ran towards her father’s van as he was reversing into their yard. Her father was not charged for negligence.
Investigations into the latest incident are continuing.