Turn yourself in!
That was the emphatic message from the disconsolate relatives of Ronald Knight to the driver who struck the 45-year-old last month and left him for dead.
Knight was walking along Bibby’s Lane, St Michael on March 11, and was a stone’s throw from his home when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.
Knight, of Exchange Hill, St Michael, succumbed to his injuries last Wednesday after more than a month in the Intensive Care Unit of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
During a vigil last night for the father-of-six, Tenileya Spratt, who said she was as close to Knight as cousins could ever be, appealed to the driver to own up to the fatal accident so the family could have peace of mind.
“He was not a dog; he did not deserve to die like this. How can you sleep at night knowing you hit a man, rolled him over?” Spratt said in the hope that the person responsible would hear her cry of pain and do the right thing.
“He was a son, a father, a brother, a cousin, a friend and at least we would be able to sleep better at night if we knew that somebody was paying for this. This is not fair,” she added.
Spratt, a nurse, had hoped that Knight would have survived the accident. In fact, she had made arrangements for him to move in with her should he be discharged from the hospital, she told Barbados TODAY.
“I am a nurse by profession and I knew that he would need consistent care as he was paralyzed. I lay on my bed and I begged God to bring home. I made plans for him because I truly did not expect him to die,” she said, as tears ran down her face.
Singing the Johnny Cash classic, When The Roll is Called Up Yonder, some 100 family members, relatives and friends attended last night’s vigil in honour of the man they described as a “handyman who would do anything for anyone in the community”.
Close friend Kurwin Webster, joined by deceased’s children, planted a cross at the spot where Knight was hit.
“The night that he was struck, he was hit so hard that he asked, ‘Where I is, what happen?’ and that brought tears to my eyes cause it could have been any one of us. I do not even believe that this should of happened to a dog, furthermore him.” a distraught Webster said.
