Hattieville Man Dies after Accident Caused by Fleeing Alleged Drug Smugglers
Anthony Somerville
One person is dead and three others were severely injured in a traffic mishap which police say was apparently caused when they tried to avoid a vehicular checkpoint. At the intersection of the Philip Goldson Highway and the Burrell Boom Road on Friday night, police were checking a blue Volkswagen Jetta when they observed a white pickup coming from Sandhill. According to police, the vehicle stopped a short distance from the checkpoint and turned around. Police chased after it but found it off the left side of the highway near mile seventeen with extensive damages. Inside were two males and a female with severe bodily injuries while a fourth person was trapped under the vehicle. That person, later identified as thirty-eight-year-old Anthony Maurice Somerville, of a Hattieville address, was pronounced dead at hospital. Police also found an initial seventeen parcels of compressed marijuana and later five more parcels, total over twenty kilograms or forty-seven pounds. The three injured persons remain in hospital. They were identified as, twenty-three-year-old Jermaine Michael Sanker, of a Corozal Town address; thirty-eight-year-old David Donovan Morrison, and twenty-year-old Diana Elizabeth Sutherland. Diana Sutherland is in a stable condition with both legs broken, Jermaine Sanker is also in a stable condition with both legs and left hand broken, and David Morrison is in a critical condition. Police believes the trio may be part of a smuggling operation from the north.
ASP Alejandro Cowo, O.C., CIB, Eastern Division
“Those persons that were inside the vehicle will be charged as soon as they are released from the hospital.”
Reporter
“So it appears that police happened to chance on a drug smuggling operation; would you agree?”
ASP Alejandro Cowo
“Police were conducting their regular VCP at the junction when they observed the vehicle coming; it was alerted that the vehicle changed direction and the police began to pursue them.”
Reporter
“But the quantity of drugs found; would you hazard to say that it suggests that it’s a drug-smuggling operation that was thwarted and ended in the…”
Alejandro Cowo
ASP Alejandro Cowo
“Yes, yes it is.”
Reporter
“Do police know the origin of these parcels of drugs, or is it a case that is still under investigation at this time for that part?”
ASP Alejandro Cowo
“We believe that the drugs were coming from the northern districts; I cannot tell you exactly if it is from Corozal or Orange Walk, but we know that it is somewhere from that area.”
A separate traffic investigation has been launched in Somerville’s death.
