A twenty-five year old dies when his motorcycle collided into a tractor
Leonardo Velasquez
A horrible traffic accident early this morning claimed one life on a main thoroughfare. It happened in the village of Trinidad up north where a twenty-five year old resident on motorcycle collided into a tractor pulling a trailer. On impact, the cycle burst into flames and Leonardo Velasquez was burnt to death. It is believed that the fogginess of the morning obscured the view of the driver of the tractor. Dalila Ical has the following report.
Dalila Ical, Reporting
The deadly collision happened just outside Trinidad Village. It was just past five o’clock in the morning; twenty-five-year-old Leonardo Velasquez, a resident of San Felipe Village, was headed towards Orange Walk Town on a motorcycle.
At the same time, Feliciano Castañeda was driving a tractor heading to his cane fields located in the outskirts of Trinidad Village. He was pulling a trailer carrying drums of water and three other persons. One of them was his son, Ronald Castañeda, who says they did not even see the motorist coming from the opposite direction as thick fog covered the area.
Ronald Castañeda, Witness
Ronald Castañeda
“We even carried headlights so that they can see that we were there with the tractor. Well, we didn’t see the motorcycle. Nothing was visible and when my father made the turn, i just heard the explosion. We were coming well, and we were going to turn but the fog was thick. We could barely see anything and the truth is that the lights of the motorcycle was not visible. When my father decided to make the turn, we just heard the impact. We didn’t even hear the motorcycle. I just felt the impact and then the fire when the cycle exploded.”
Dalila Ical
“The explosion happened minutes after or seconds after?”
Ronald Castañeda
“That happened immediately, it exploded upon impact.”
Velasquez collided into the centre of the tractor as the elderly Castañeda made a left turn into a sugar cane road. The impact flung him onto the metal fender which cracked his helmet, causing severe head injuries. Velasquez would then fall under the tractor, near his motorcycle. When it exploded, Velasquez’s body caught fire.
Ronald Castañeda
“What we did was to extinguish the fire on the young man because he was burning up along with the motorcycle. He was burning up along with the motorcycle. Well, we had brought a lot of water. We had four drums of water and we emptied three drums on him. We could not extinguish the fire so what we did was to drag the motorcycle to the other side of the road so that we could extinguish the fire on the young man.”
Velasquez did not survive the collision. Feliciano Castañeda, who drove the tractor, did but not without injury.
Ronald Castañeda
“The impact threw my father from the tractor. he broke his leg and is in the hospital.”
Castañeda says his father’s leg was broken in several areas but is stable. The Castañeda’s tractor was badly damaged by the collision and the subsequent explosion.
