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Denise Dias is a Special Person The man who had killed her daughter had fled the country…but for Denise Dias, the fight had just begun…By Michael JordanAs is often the case with misfortune, the tragedy that engulfed Denise Dias came at a time when everything seemed to be perfect in her personal life. She had three healthy children and a loving husband. She was a successful businesswoman.If there was any foreshadowing of things to come, it came in a strange dream that her eldest child, 17-year-old Alicea had on the night of Sunday 18 August, 1996.Alicea had dreamed that her maternal grandmother who resided overseas, had passed away.At the ‘funeral’, her ‘dead’ grandmother had said: “You forgot to put the butterflies in my coffin.”So convinced was Alicea that something was indeed amiss with her grandmother that the teen had told her mother about her nightmare the following day.Mrs. Dias knew that nothing whatever was the matter with her mother. After all, she had spoken to her mom the day after Alicea’s dream and Mother was fine.She pushed the nightmare to the back of her mind. But she would have cause to remember it a few days later.Denise Dias It was Friday, August 23, 1996, and Mrs. Dias was at the family’s Oleander Gardens home, awaiting Alicea’s return from work. The St. Joseph’s High School student had recently written her CXCs, and had a part-time job at an advertising agency.An excellent artist, she was seconded to Trinidad for a year to do advertising and computer graphics and to work as a junior graphic artist.Around 5:00 pm, Mrs. Dias heard someone knocking at her front door.She went to answer and the visitor told her that someone had struck Alicea down on the East Coast Demerara public road, a short distance from her home.“I ran up the road to the spot,” Mrs. Dias recalled. “I saw her lying there. Coming from England, (where Mrs. Dias grew up), they say don’t move an injured person, so I was pushing people away. Eventually a young man in his early twenties said: ‘Miss, if you don’t move her now, she will be dead.’“This Good Samaritan allowed me to go in his vehicle with Alicea and his girlfriend. Every bump on the roadway seemed like a mountain.”“We went to the Woodlands Hospital because my cousin Dr Billy Fung-a Fat was there.”But they were too late. Alicea was dead by the time they arrived.She had passed away on her maternal grandmother’s birthday.“When my husband found me, I was bracing on the fence at Woodlands,” Mrs. Dias said. “I was cold and totally dumb and numb.”The driver who had killed Alicea fled the scene. Fortunately, some eyewitnesses had spotted his licence number. They gave this information to the police who arrested the suspect about three hours later. He was detained at the Sparendaam Police Station.Alicea GoveiaAccording to Mrs. Dias, about eight years before, the same suspect had struck down and killed a 52-year-old man. That case was still pending when Alicea was killed.The accused appeared in court and was released on the then substantial sum of $700,000 bail.But Alicea’s family had received disturbing rumours that the suspect had a Bermudan passport. That rumour turned out to be all too true.Shortly after making bail, the accused left the country, reportedly via the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. He never returned.And perhaps, in true Guyanese fashion, Mrs. Dias should have grieved for a few months, and moved on.But the businesswoman had spent the first 29 years of her life in England, where, according to her, “if someone did something wrong, something was done about it.”“I was angry. I was very angry that someone could just kill another person—in his case two people—and go away. And through the anger and pain I asked myself: ‘What is going on in this country?”Determined that Alicea’s death would not be in vain, Mrs. Dias decided to take on the system of lax traffic laws.Back then, there was no safety belt law, no breathalyzer test for drunk drivers, no speed gun tests.Despite her heavy business schedule, Mrs. Dias, along with family members and close friends, formed the Alicea Foundation, to fight for road safety legislation.She discovered that Alicea had taken out an insurance policy and the money from the policy was invested in the Foundation. Mrs. Dias was soon joined by several others—mothers and fathers—who had lost loves ones in similar circumstances.Borrowing an idea from a movement in Peru, the group then formed the organisation “Mothers in Black.”By 1997, members of Mothers in Black and their supporters began holding vigils every Friday outside Parliament Buildings to bring attention to their cause, while demanding drastic changes to the road safety laws.Eventually, the powers that be began to listen. After a lapse of several years, Traffic officials again began to demand that motorcyclists wear helmets. The safety belt law was enforced, along with breathalyzer test and speed guns.But Mrs. Dias says that there is still much to be done.For one, she wishes that there were public transportation, as an alternative to minibuses, which are blamed for many of the multiple fatalities.“There is no (public) transportation to ferry our children to and from school, (and) I understand that many of these buses are owned by policemen.“In Jamaica (about ten years ago) they pulled all the buses off the road. They had special exams for drivers and conductors. They put them in uniforms. It made a significant difference in Jamaica’s road fatality figures.”“The judicial system also doesn’t help. Our police prosecutors have to deal with murders and other crimes as well as traffic cases,Cheap Authentic NFL Jerseys, so most of the cases just pile up.“Most of the poorer families are affected. A child is killed and someone offers (the family) $1M or $500,000 and says ‘don’t do anything about the case.’“You can be angry with the person but if the judicial system was effective, people would not be taking these bribes.”Mrs. Dias (with picture of Alicea) with members of Mothers in Black and supportersMothers in Black also serves as a movement through which women who had lost loved ones on the roadways could come together to share their grief.For them, Denise Dias is like a second mother.“Nobody knows the turmoil and pain that you go through when you lose that child, which is murder on the roads. For instance, when going to court, or on the victim’s birthday anniversary, you need someone to talk to.”“I never expected to be as strong as this. I was never the one to be at the forefront. Now I go around to schools.”“I found inner strength in being able to cope with losing Alicea by comforting others.“The loss is unbearable. Of course, I often imagine what she would have been like. I could have had grandchildren.”But I feel blessed that Alicea was in my life. I rather know that she was in my life than that she was never there at all.”Aside from her battle against reckless road use, Mrs. Dias is also the founder of Help and Shelter, which assists abused women and children.She has also been the co-founder of and executive director of various businesses, including Creations Limited, Connections Travel service, and DD Signs.Mrs. Dias has also been on the committees of the Squash Association, the Guyana Motor Racing Committee.But her main passion is still road safety.“When Alicia died, there was very little (in terms of road safety laws), and in three years we made a step in our own little way.“It’s a hard road, but I have to keep fighting the cause until the very end.”
