Ann Marie Reedir woke up around 2 am on Sunday and as is customary peeped into her daughter’s room. Only this time Mahadai “Savi” Chatoorgoon was not in her bed.
Reedir spent the next few hours tirelessly calling Savi’s cellphone, not knowing that her only daughter was lying dead on the newly-opened section of the Solomon Hochoy Highway extension to Point Fortin highway.
In an interview yesterday, Reedir, of Devil’s Woodyard, Hindustan, said she last spoke to her daughter around 8 pm on Saturday.
“She called my phone to ask if I was going to buy food, then she said to go home without her that she would get something to eat and then come home,” a distraught Reedir said. “I didn’t know that was the last time I would hear from her.”
Reedir has four other children, all boys, and said Savi was her second child.
An autopsy done at the San Fernando mortuary yesterday said Chatoorgoon, 18, died of a primary haemorrhage due to injuries she sustained when her boyfriend’s car plunged off a precipice on Sunday around 5.40 am on the northbound carriageway of the newly-opened Golconda to Debe segment of the highway.
Her boyfriend, Adrian Koylass, 21, of Ste Madeleine, lost control of the car, which flipped several times before stopping about 30 metres from Papourie Road overpass.
Chatoorgoon, the front seat passenger, was thrown from the vehicle and died, while Koylass sustained a broken leg.
It was the first fatal accident along the billion-dollar highway.
Reedir said Chatoorgoon worked as a clerk at Seegolam’s Hardware, Princes Town, and was hoping to get engaged to Koylass in October.
“Adrian’s mother said she was already taking pictures of the wedding dress she wanted to wear.”
Koylass remains warded at the San Fernando General Hospital.
Chatoorgoon’s father, Roopnarine, said tentative arrangements are being made for a funeral service on Thursday.