Young Mother Perishes Following RTA in Ladyville

A twenty-two-year-old mother of two lost her life this morning, following last evening’s traffic accident in Ladyville. Marcia Lopez was waiting on a bus to head home to her family in San Pablo Village, Orange Walk when she was caught in a collision between three vehicles. A dump truck rear-ended a jeep SUV before crashing into a parked Toyota RAV-Four. In the process, Lopez was hit and died hours later after she was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Today, News Five’s Duane Moody found out more and files this report.

Duane Moody, Reporting

All three vehicles, two SUVs and a dump truck remain on scene at the North Gas Station property between miles eight and nine of the Philip Goldson Highway in Ladyville. It’s the telltale sign that something went awfully wrong on Thursday evening, shortly after five o’clock.

Surveillance footage captured the ordeal that has left one woman dead. As can be seen, a Jeep SUV, driven by thirty-eight-year-old Walter McCullock comes to a stop on the highway before the dump truck, despite trying to avoid a collision, rear-ends the SUV. The vehicles are pinned together and come to a stop on the gas station compound after it crashes into a lamppost and a parked Toyota RAV-Four.  The dump truck was driven at the time by thirty-one-year-old Errol Garbutt, who recounted what happened just after five p.m.

Errol Garbutt

Errol Garbutt, Dump Truck Driver

“I was on my last load, probably a little after five on my way to the marina down the road a bit to deliver my last load. Almost in front here, the driver of this jeep just came to a stop in front of my truck and I am loaded. I sounded the horn, he looked back at me in the mirror. I just held the horn and tried to stop, but these trucks don’t stop on a dime. I tried to avoid him; I got a as much to the side as I could so what really hit him was the front here and my wheel. So he caught the wheel and started turning my steering. I couldn’t hold it; it almost broke my hand trying to hold the steering wheel. My truck started coming across the road, there’s traffic coming, I don’t know how we didn’t hit anymore cars that were coming this way cause it was a line. My lane didn’t have anything but him in it; my lane was clear. He turned into like a crash bar in the front of my truck. So he actually entered in here before me and eventually ended up hitting this car and ended up here. I save people’s lives every day; you would be surprised. They come on the road and get right back off. I don’t understand sometimes. I just tell myself, they just don’t care about themselves. But you see in this case, it wasn’t him or his colleagues, it was somebody waiting for the bus to go home after the work that had nothing to do with none of this and that’s very sad.”

Minutes after, both drivers got out to find that a woman had been hit. She was on her side near the rear wheel of the dump truck. Many residents hurried to the scene to render assistance to Marcia Lopez. The twenty-two-year-old resident of San Pablo Village, Orange Walk had just left her work at Global Village Hotel across the highway and was waiting for a bus to travel home. She was taken to the K.H.M.H., but succumbed this morning.

Errol Garbutt

“When I stepped out, I saw the people in here going crazy, but I didn’t see that girl down there until I stepped out. I didn’t even know. And then somebody was shouting somebody was under my truck so I turned around and I looked and they are saying someone else was under there. So I looked and there was nobody else; it was just here. My truck actually stopped right before it would have rolled on top of her. Yo have to feel a kind of way. I don’t know the young lady, but I heard she has two children and was young too; that is messed up on all levels.”

Persons at the scene say that Lopez was struck by the jeep and not the truck, while others say that the truck was speeding. Garbutt, however, claims that he wasn’t.

Errol Garbutt

“This truck, the load alone is around eighteen tonnes. We cannot stop in ten feet, in twenty feet, in fifty feet abruptly. The driver had all space to move and get to the side; that’s why I held the horn cause I couldn’t do anything else. That’s why I held the horn and hold my brakes and hope that I stop before something like this happen.”

Accidents like these shed light that drivers must be precautious and take heed to the rules of the road.

Errol Garbutt

“I guess he was either trying to go into Sky Restaurant or the gas station, but he just stopped. His response to me when I asked him why he didn’t move out of the way was because traffic was coming. But if you notice out there, there is a double line and that double line has a meaning. It is not there to be pretty; it is there because you shouldn’t cross.”

Both McCullock and Garbutt have been issued with Notices of Intended Prosecution pending further investigation into the fatal incident. Duane Moody for News Five.