Belmopan Resident Killed in RTA…

Yeymi Saquic

Tonight one man from Belmopan is in Police lockdown and another is in the morgue following a traffic accident on Monday. It happened about eight miles off the George Price Highway near the Green Tropics Compound. Both men, Marcelo Reymundo and Yeymi Saquic, are employees of that company and were heading home when the accident occurred. The official version is that Marcelo Reymundo was driving a small pickup, and Saquic was one of the passengers who was flung out and killed when the pickup lost control. Today Mike Rudon headed west and found out that there are two decidedly different versions to this tragic story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

At just after two yesterday, this pickup, driven by Belmopan resident and Green Tropics employee Marcelo Reymundo, loaded down with passengers, was headed for Belmopan when disaster struck. The pickup lost control and flipped. One man died and five persons were injured. Police arrived on the scene shortly after.

Howell Gillett

Via Phone: Supt. Howell Gillett, O.C., Belmopan Police Formation

“What we’ve discovered so far is that Marcello Reymundo of a Belmopan address was the driver of the vehicle and he was travelling along with eight other passengers. Some of them were family members and others just people getting a ride out to the Belmopan area. Sometime around two-thirty p.m., he was driving from an east to west direction about eight miles north of Banana Bank when he lost control of the vehicle and overturned and during the process, one Yeymi Adolfo Saquic, twenty-six years Guatemalan labourer of a Belmopan address received head and body injuries and later died on his way to the hospital.”

As we said, that’s the police version. They claim that Saquic was a passenger in the pickup. But an eyewitness who lives just down the road is certain that Saquic was not in the truck, but was walking on the road when he was struck.

Keli Martinez, Eyewitness

“It was like two o’clock when the workers of Green Tropics were passing here and the vehicle was coming on the road and then he give a ride to the workers to ker them out but he was drunk. And then he continued and the young bwai was walking on the road when one of the young girls tell me if I could go see if the truck was going and I tell her no. when I see the vehicle, I see it just slid on the road and it knock the young boy.”

Mike Rudon

“So you actually see when the vehicle knock ahn?”

Keli Martinez

Keli Martinez

“Yes.”

Mike Rudon

“”What happened? It fell on top of him?”

Keli Martinez

“Yes, it fell top of him. He was going too fast.”

Mike Rudon

“Now, when you get there, the guy was still alive?”

Keli Martinez

“No, he died instantly.”

Martinez insists that the vehicle flipped and hit Saquic, who was walking on the side of the road. Like we said…a completely difference version from Police, but whatever the circumstances, Marcelo Reymundo will feel the full brunt of the law for his role in the fatal accident.

Keli Martinez

“They were hurt; a little girl about seven or eight years, she broke her hand. A late that was sitting in the vehicle, she got cut on her face and the others that were in the back of the vehicle, they were hurt….it was like eight to nine persons.”

Mike Rudon

“What was the driver doing when you got there?”

Keli Martinez

“He was waiting for the police to come.”

Mike Rudon

“He wasn’t saying anything?”

Keli Martinez

“Yes, but he was drunk; he can’t know what he was doing.”

Supt. Howell Gillett

“Mr. Marcelo Reymundo has since been charged for manslaughter by negligence, causing death by careless conduct, driving without due care and attention, failure to provide blood or urine specimens, drove an unlicensed motor vehicle and five counts of negligent harm meaning that five of his total passengers were injured in a minor way.”

Reymundo is currently in Police custody. He will be arraigned on Wednesday in Belmopan Magistrate Court. Mike Rudon for News Five.

According to Officer Commanding Belmopan Superintendent Howell Gillett, they are basing their version on information provided by persons who were in the pickup when the accident occurred.