Deadly Weekend on George Price Highway
Over the weekend, there were other traffic mishaps. A near-fatal collision involving multiple vehicles, also along the George Price Highway, left several people injured. The road traffic accident happened on Saturday night near mile thirty-one, when a Toyota Camry reportedly clipped a trailer carrying a bulldozer. The impact, according to responders, resulted in a multi-car collision, totaling the Camry. Fortunately, the driver survived the crash but not without a broken limb. While traffic along the stretch was backed up for about an hour, a responder, armed with a camera, happened upon the scene. News Five was able to speak with Lorne Bradley earlier today and he gave us an account of what he saw when he approached the mangled vehicle.
Lorne Bradley, Responder
“We got stopped at a bridge, we noticed there was a lineup of cars. There were maybe about six or seven in front of us so we were there for about five to ten minutes and I decided to go and take a look and I brought my camera with me and I had seen that there was a severely damaged car in the middle of the bridge. My first thought when I walked up was, “I’m pretty sure someone has died. This is like a really severe accident.” But I went up and I learned that everyone was okay. It looked like the driver had broken his shin and there was a little bit of blood on him and the car was pretty severely damaged and I realized that it wasn’t a single vehicle accident as I thought it was at first. It had hit a bulldozer. There was a truck that was transporting one over the bridge and the bulldozer was sticking out further than the trailer and I guess the guy had clipped the side of the bulldozer and it was pretty nasty.”
Isani Cayetano
“In terms of the response, either police, ambulance or traffic safety, what was that like?”
Lorne Bradley
“There was a police officer or two there. There wasn’t a heavy police presence. There were a lot of people there taking pictures and photos and videos with their phones and stuff and everyone was gathering around. There were people there, I believe one of them was a nurse and was trained in tending to the victims and they had the driver laid down on the floor and they were checking on him, making sure that he didn’t lose consciousness. I’d say it took the police about a half and hour and then the ambulance followed shortly afterwards at which point they tended to him and they took everyone away.”
Lorne Bradley
Isani Cayetano
“In terms of resuming vehicular traffic along that stretch, either moving the wreckage off the highway or what have you, can you describe what took place thereafter?”
Lorne Bradley
“Well after the police came they had quickly assessed the damage and they did a little investigation and had taken some of their own photos. And then they got someone with a truck and chains to pull the vehicle off the middle of the bridge and they brought it to the side of the road at which point four or five of them had moved the car by hand further off, and then the front they couldn’t because of the engine and so they got another guy in a pickup to come and push it with his vehicle off the road. And then after that it took another ten, fifteen minutes we had to wait for the ambulances to clear a path to leave and then once they were gone we were able to get out.”
Injured in the accident were several other passengers, including an elderly woman. In other traffic news, there was a fatality in Santa Marta Village where forty-year-old David Thiessen was knocked down on Saturday night. Thiessen’s body was discovered on the ground on an unknown street in the community. Police have detained a resident of Guinea Grass Village and are seeking another person in connection with the incident.
