Pickup driver gives different version of fatal crash
It was a traffic accident that shocked and saddened two nations. Now, several days after the death of a Cuban volunteer doctor, the man driving her on that fateful morning is telling his story to News 5… And what he has to say totally contradicts the truck driver on the other side of the collision. Jacqueline Woods reports from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.
Philip Dolmo, Driver, Ministry of Health
“When I was trapped in the vehicle, I just felt pain in both legs down here and up there. And my hand just felt numb; I had no feeling in my hand at all…I was trapped inside the vehicle, both of us, and I just heard voices and the ambulance came and they started to cut to release us out of the vehicle. The steering wheel was resting on my chest.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Did you hear Dr. Garcia say anything?”
Philip Dolmo
“Not, not after the collision.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Sixty-seven year old Philip Dolmo, remembering the tragic accident that killed his passenger, Dr. Leidys Garcia Lopez and left him with two broken feet and a broken left hand. Both Dolmo and Garcia were returning from the Golden Haven Home in Hattieville when their Mitsubishi pickup collided with a Coca-Cola semi-trailer on the Northern Highway. Speaking from his hospital bed at the K.H.M.H., Dolmo said following their stop at the home for the elderly, it was the doctor’s decision to take the Boom Road into Belize City.
Philip Dolmo
“Because the doctor told me that it was better because she lived…she wanted me to take her to Kings Park to the Cuban Embassy. So she said rather than going around to town and coming back up she would rather go through Boom and then go right through.”
Dolmo said on the way to the city it had just started to drizzle and he and the doctor were having a conversation in which Garcia told him she would be soon visiting her family.
Philip Dolmo
“Yes, general conversation, Jackie. She told me that she was going back home to Cuba and so to see her family…She was a nice person Jackie, I noh had no fault with her, seh well, loud speaking person or so.”
Jacqueline Woods
“And she was looking forward to going back to Cuba?”
Philip Dolmo
“Going back to Cuba to see her family.”
Jacqueline Woods
“When was she going back to Cuba?”
Philip Dolmo
“I think next month in March.”
Dolmo says as he approached mile six on the Northern Highway he saw the big truck from a mile away coming at a fast speed in their lane, barrelling towards them. Dolmo, who has been driving since 1968, says it was his first accident and he was not at fault.
Jacqueline Woods
“The driver is saying, first he is saying that you were travelling at a fast speed. Two, he is saying that he saw the Mitsubishi pickup start to swerve and he did his best to try and avoid the collision, but that did not happen. Do you remember losing control?”
Philip Dolmo
“Jackie, I was pretty much alert. When I say pretty much alert, because I was running between thirty to forty-five miles an hour, so I couldn’t lose control, I couldn’t lose control. But when I saw the truck coming at a high speed, I tried to swerve to the other side of the road, but the truck is bigger than the small vehicle that I was in. So it came right in and the doctor shouted at me, she said D look out, and that’s the same time I swerve out, but I did it too late and the truck was right on top of us.”
Jacqueline Woods
“So you are saying it was the Bowen and Bowen driver’s fault?”
Philip Dolmo
“Right, that came into we. I was not driving fast, No.”
Jacqueline Woods
“So your pickup did not swerve and you were not travelling fast?”
Philip Dolmo
“No. I was never a fast driver Jackie, never. I had on my seatbelt and the doctor also had on her seatbelt.”
Dolmo says he has been driving for Dr. Garcia since she came to Belize in 2001. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
The police have not charged Dolmo or the driver of the Coke truck, Omar Villas.
