Four road fatalities mar weekend
One woman is dead and another remains hospitalised after the car they were travelling in flipped on the Western Highway on Sunday night. According to police, the accident occurred around eight p.m. as twenty-nine year old Doris Martinez was returning to Belize City after spending a day at the National Agricultural and Trade Show in Belmopan. Inside the Nissan Sentra were passengers Helen Gentle, two of Martinez’s daughters and two other children. It is reported that as the vehicle reached between miles thirty and thirty-one, Martinez momentarily let go of the steering wheel and apparently lost control of the vehicle. As the car started to swerve, it is believed that Martinez hit the brakes and that is when the vehicle overturned several times. Martinez, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from the vehicle, but the car apparently landed on her, killing the young mother on the spot. The children, between the ages of six and sixteen were taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, treated for minor injuries and released. However, Gentle remains at the K.H.M.H. suffering from a broken right arm. This is not the first time in the news for Martinez. Last year she was arrested after throwing acid in the face of a woman at a nightclub in Belize City.
A second traffic accident, this one on the Southern Highway, claimed another life over the weekend. According to police reports, just after two on Saturday morning, twenty-seven year old Jose Angel Moralez was killed as he rode his bicycle on the highway near the Placencia road junction. Twenty-year-old Damien Isaac Martinez, a resident of Mayan King Village, was driving a car when he knocked down Moralez and another cyclist. Both victims received serious head and body injuries and Moralez died at the scene. His companion, still unidentified, remains in a critical condition at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. As for the driver, police have charged him with manslaughter by negligence, causing death by careless conduct, driving without due care and attention, driving a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s permit and driving a motor vehicle not covered by third party risk insurance.
Meanwhile, in the north, Corozal police responded to a distress call reporting yet another traffic fatality. Thirty-year-old Petronilo Acosta of Caledonia Village was killed just after eight on Friday night when he was knocked down by a truck. Twenty-six year old Augustine Tzul of Corozal was driving his towhead on Fifth Avenue when he says a man ran across the road and he was unable to avoid hitting him. Acosta was rushed to the Corozal Town Hospital, but authorities there pronounced him dead on arrival. At news time tonight, no charges had been filed against Tzul.
Corozal police were once again called out, this time on Saturday afternoon, to the Commercial Free Zone, where witnesses related details of a deadly accident. Twenty-seven year old Alejandro Pastor, a visitor from Merida, told police that he was driving in the zone when he knocked down thirty-four year old Noemi Juarez. Juarez, also a Mexican, was rushed to a hospital in Chetumal, but died while undergoing treatment. Pastor has since been charged with manslaughter by negligence, driving without due care and attention, causing death by careless conduct and driving a motor vehicle without a valid permit.
