Truck driver to know fate today

THE truck driver currently on trial in the San Fernando First Assize Court for motor manslaughter in which three people died on St James Street, San Fernando, will know his fate today. Justice Paula-Mae Weekes will today sum up the case in which Matura Lakhan, 71, of Couva, is facing a three-count indictment before a jury of nine members. Matura’s truck plunged into three vehicles, including a maxi taxi. The crash claimed the lives of Lynette Chaitan-Ramroop, 40, Junior Secondary School pupil Kevin Mohammed, 14, and Jillian Telemaque Sifontis, a mother of one. Lakhan, who has pleaded not guilty, is contending that on reaching midway downhill on St James Street, the truck’s braking system failed.

He testified that he panicked and this resulted in him failing to engage the truck’s handbrakes. Lakhan is being defended by attorney Douglas Hayden St Clair. Prosecuting attorney Roger Gaspard (Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions), has submitted that Lakhan ought to have been aware that he was at the time driving a defective truck. The issue to be resolved in the jury’s mind, he said in his address to them last week, was whether Lakhan knew the truck’s braking system was defective so as to constitute an act of negligence on his (driver’s) part.