A five-year-old girl died on Wednesday after being knocked down on the Mahaicony Public Road by a car and the driver of the vehicle succumbed on Thursday after he was struck on his head by a man said to be a relative of the child.

Dead are Kimberly Stuart, the youngest of four children of Cottage, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara and 60-year-old Neville Chin, of 180 Earl's Court, La Bonne Intention, East Coast Demerara.

Stabroek News understands that at about 10 am on Wednesday, Chin, accompanied by his wife, had been on his way to Rosignol to deliver a package, when Stuart ran out from behind a minibus directly into the path of his car and was struck.

According to the dead man's stepdaughter, Famie Henriques, who told the story on her mother's behalf, Chin picked up the unconscious child and took her to the hospital. He was accompanied by a policeman from the Mahaicony Police Station and the child's grandmother. The child was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital.

As Chin was leaving the hospital to return to the Mahaicony Police station, an eyewitness said, a man approached him from behind and dealt him a blow to the head with what appeared to be a 2x4 piece of wood. Chin was immediately rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital in critical condition.

Henriques told Stabroek News that when she and her mother arrived at the hospital yesterday morning they met Chin's body wrapped up and were informed that he had passed away at 2:30 am. An X-ray shown to them revealed that the former horticulturist and employee of Aventis (an Agricultural machinery parts company in Paris, France) had suffered multiple fractures to the skull.

When Stabroek News visited Mahaicony yesterday, the child's grandmother Eslyn Chichester said that the man who attacked Chin was not known to her family.

She related that the dead child and her older brother had followed her oldest sister (aged 13) to get a minibus at High Dam, Mahaicony. According to the grandmother, immediately after the bus drove off, the brother, without waiting for his younger sister raced across the road. The five-year-old followed and was hit by the car. She said that had he waited the whole unfortunate episode could have been avoided. According to her, Chin had told her that should anything happen to the child, he would be willing to compensate the family and pay all their expenses.

The man's stepdaughter told Stabroek News, "He was a man of great respect. He did not deserve to die that way."

Meanwhile, the policeman who was with Chin and the grandmother at the hospital, managed to arrest Chin's assailant who is currently in custody as police continue to carry out their investigations.