Life has come to a standstill at the home of the Bonnelame family on Avenue Corps de Garde, Camp Levieux. Jean Luc Bonnelame, 52, and his wife Marie Christina Vanessa Bonnelame, 38, née Jean Louis, lost their lives when the motorbike they were riding was struck head-on by a car on the Rivière Noire road near Unicity in Médine. The impact was so violent that the two occupants of the motorbike were thrown onto the asphalt and killed instantly. The driver of the car abandoned his vehicle and fled. He was found at the Wellkin clinic in Moka, where he was admitted. The 21-year-old resident of Belle Isle, Bambous refused to take a breathalyser test. After checking with the Traffic Branch, he was found not to hold a driving licence. To date, the number of deaths on our roads is one hundred and twenty-four, compared with one hundred and eight in similar times.
The funeral ceremony for Vanessa Bonnelame and her husband Jean Luc Bonnelame took place at 1pm on Monday 4 December at the church of Sainte Odile in Camp Levieux. They were both subsequently laid to rest in the Saint Martin cemetery. It is a feeling of revolt that pervades the families and friends of the deceased. “Kouma enn sofer kapav enlev lavi de dimoun ek les trwa zenfan orfelin”.
At around 5.26am on Sunday 3 December, an accident involving a car and a motorbike occurred on the Rivière Noire road near the Médine Unicity. A team of police officers from Bambous police station, led by Sergeant Beeharee, were alerted and soon arrived on the scene. A grey Kia Picanto car and a black Delta motorbike collided. Both vehicles were off the left-hand side of the road opposite Cascavelle Mall. A man and a woman lay dead at the scene. A doctor in an ambulance from the Service d’Aide Médicale d’Urgence arrived on the scene to find that both victims were dead.
On Sunday morning 3 December, Jean Bonnelame, an employee of Beau-Bassin/Rose-Hill Town Hall, had got on his motorbike to take his wife to the hotel where she worked as a chef de partie. Even though it was raining and the road was slippery, there was no reason to believe that the couple would die.
The driver of the Kia Picanto was nowhere to be found. The two bodies were then taken to the morgue at Victoria Hospital, Candos, for an autopsy. The autopsy, conducted by Dr Sudesh Kumar Gungadin, head of the police forensic department, attributed the deaths of Jean Luc Bonnelame and his wife Vanessa Bonnelame to multiple injuries.
Meanwhile, the driver of the car was found at the Wellkin clinic in Moka. He refused to submit to a breathalyser test administered by a police officer from the Emergency Response Service who had been dispatched to the clinic. He was placed under arrest under police supervision with handcuffs on his feet. This young man does not have a driving licence; he held a provisional (learner) licence for a motorcycle, which has expired. The Kia Picanto was a rental car.
