2 children hospitalised due to traffic accidents

It seems hardly a week goes by without someone getting into a traffic accident. Particularly disturbing are recent cases of children being severely injured or killed in auto mishaps. And while there is some good news for one young victim today, she has been joined by yet another little one in the hospital. Added to the agony of these parents is a lack of accountability by the drivers responsible. Jacqueline Woods reports from the K.H.M.H.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Diamaris Ramirez is not sure when her daughter ten-year-old Joanna Coc will be well enough to go home, but on Monday the little girl came out of her coma after being unconscious for four days.

Diamaris Ramirez, Mother
“I was very happy because I was not sure if she would have come out of the coma, because she was very sick.”

“My daughter’s left foot is broken and she has many scrapes and bruises, cuts all over body. The most serious injury is to her head and to her back.”

Ramirez says they were visiting with friends in Camalote Village when her daughter was knocked down as she walked on the side of the highway.

As young Joanna makes some progress, another mother hopes that her six-year-old son will be able to walk well after he recovers. Glenford McLean was knocked down by the very same bus he and his family had just alighted by the Pound Yard Bridge around seven-fifteen on Saturday night. According to Pauline McLean, her son?s left foot is fractured and he is traumatised. According to McLean the Novelos bus driver did not even wait until they had cleared the area, but just drove off. McLean says what is also disturbing is the fact that the bus driver is denying causing the injury and the bus company has not even bothered to visit them at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.

Pauline McLean, Glenford’s Mother
“He said that he heard a lot of people hollering for him to tell him to stop, but we weren’t telling him to stop because we wanted to get in his bus, we were telling him he was knocking down a child. He ran over the baby’s foot and Tuesday when I saw him, he looked at me and tell me he didn’t run over the baby foot because if he mi run over my baby’s foot my baby foot mi wah crack up, but my baby have a fractured bone in his foot. So I ask him what he wah do bout it, and he seh he wah come dah hospital come see my baby… he noh come here as yet. I went to his work and they noh do anything about it.”

“I am just asking them to help me because I am a single mother, I have two kids and to watch my baby like this inna pain… he seh he mi wah come back. He come the Saturday night come see what happen, the doctor tell him just wait five minutes and you could come back in. They give the baby the injection and when we look outside for him he was already gone.”

McLean says it is painful to see her son in agony and he has difficulty sleeping because she believes he is having nightmares about the accident. So far this year three children have died and four injured as a result of road traffic accidents. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

The driver accused of hitting Joanna Coc, Domingo Danile Mengez, has been charged. Joanna’s mother, however, tells News Five she has been told Mengez, who is from Argentina, has already left the country.