Flight attendant killed in motorbike crash

CARIBBEAN Star flight attendant Beena Rampersad was killed in a motorbike accident Saturday night, while her boyfriend, Marvin Wilson, was up to late last night fighting for his life at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Mount Hope Medical Sciences Complex. Rampersad, who lived with her boyfriend at his parent’s Greenvale Avenue, Valsayn North home would have turned 26 today, and had returned from Antigua hours before she met her death at the nearby Mayfield Road. According to the police, around 9.30 pm Saturday, Wilson, 28, was riding a motorbike west along Mayfield Road, in company with Rampersad, the pillion rider.  The two were on their way home, police said.

Wilson, a joiner, is said to have lost control of the motorbike, which collided into a palm tree that was completely knocked. The motorbike then slammed into an outside wall at 71 Mayfield Road.  Wilson and Rampersad were both rushed to the Mount Hope Medical Science Complex, where the former flight attendant was pronounced dead on arrival. Wilson, police said, is in critical condition suffering from head injuries.  At his home yesterday, relatives told Newsday the doctors told them to wait 24 hours to see the progress.  They could not say what his prognosis is. “We are just holding on,” his brother, Mark, said, explaining that Wilson appears to be hearing but is unable to respond. Mark said he could not say where the couple was coming from because he only learned of the news when he came home yesterday morning.

Other relatives of Wilson, however, said when Rampersad returned from Antigua Saturday, she brought a part for the motorbike, which they said belonged to her, but was used by both. “We just don’t know what happened,” Wilson’s relatives said regarding the cause of the accident.  Police also said that the motorbike bore no registration number. At the Dookiesingh Street, St Augustine  home of Rampersad’s mother, Janice and her stepfather, Ashmir Mohammed, said the deceased was a good person to her mother and him, even though he is not her father, who had passed away some time ago. Janice was not at home, and was said by Mohammed to be making funeral arrangements. “She was a good girl and she never showed me any badface,” Mohammed said, adding that he last saw his stepdaughter on May 17 because of her job.  Rampersad first worked as a flight attendant at Air Caribbean, before leaving for Caribbean Star, which is owned by Texas billionaire Allan Stanford, who lives in Antigua. Cpl Flaveney of the St Joseph Police Station is continuing investigations.