In 3 Days – 3 Fatal Accidents, 3 Different Highways
Three fatal accidents on three different highways in three consecutive days have claimed the lives of five persons, including a ten-month-old boy. It’s the chilling statistics of the past few days, time that was supposed to be the joyous Garifuna Settlement Day weekend and start of another workweek. On Sunday, Kimberly Griffith and Elmer Avila died on the Hummingbird Highway during a collision. You just heard the heart-wrenching double fatality involving Tifara Samuels-Hall and the baby which occurred on Monday afternoon. And then this morning, P.C. Kieron Carlos perished when he lost control of his motorcycle and collided into a culvert on the Mameyal curve on the Phillip Goldson Highway. These tragic incidents bring in sharp focus road safety, but also living with the trauma for the survivors and relatives of the victims. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Golda Reynolds, Accident Survivor
Golda Reynolds
“I can’t even drive my car. Today, I come out of hospital, my dad came for me and slamming the door: trigger. How can I ever drive again? How can I ever, even though I am doing what I need to do to prevent noh deh pan phone, noh do this, noh do that, how can I trust putting my babies dehn ina wah car? How can I trust anybody fu put my baby dehn ina wah car or even myself. And dehn noh understand the type of things weh dehn put you through.”
Duane Moody, Reporting
Golda Reynolds speaks of the trauma that she will now have to live with, having lost her youngest child and her best friend on Monday afternoon. A the same time, she realises that despite her own careful attitude while driving, it couldn’t prevent the tragedy.
Golda Reynolds
“I am very cautious. I not even use my phone. I noh talk to people, I noh even swerve outta pothole when it comes to me driving because I don’t play that. I was doing forty-five because I was driving pretty slow. I noh know mien. I careful mien. I always careful, but yesterday, careful didn’t count for that. That man hit me and shub me into that vehicle and I couldn’t do anything.”
It is something that the Department of Transport has been advocating from a behavioural and an enforcement standpoint. And it is about driving for yourself and the next driver.
Peter Williams, Operations Officer, Department of Transport
Peter Williams
“We always try to give drivers safety tips and seatbelts is one of the main safety tips that any driver can utilise to maximise their safety for not only themselves, but their family and other passengers and road users. The seatbelt it is an offence to not wear your seatbelt while operating your vehicle on the highway. And so we want to encourage the use of seatbelts while on the highway because it helps to reduce the chance of persons flying out the vehicle in terms of a collision. The fact of the matter is, Duane that often times, people fail to realise that they may be the ones driving properly but it may be the fault of an oncoming vehicle. We have to start to teach young people the importance of road safety and also we are trying to help to share information on road safety. We want people to understand the impacts that come with road safety collisions and crashes. From the standpoint of enforcement, we are partnering with different law-enforcement agencies.”
Operations Officer Peter Williams says they are trying to educate motorists about defensive driving. But for survivors, as well as the loved ones of victims, there’s also the aspect of coping with the trauma.
Golda Reynolds
“My daughter came in. First of all, they were happy to see me alive because everybody have to draw it in and I think my dad told them their brother had died. But when I came to this house and I see this walker and I see this clothes and I see these tubs and I see these little things that he play with, I broke. And I called them and I told them do you know that your brother died, my daughter and son just hug me and cry.”
Duane Moody
“How do you tell that seven-year-old that mommy noh di come back right now?”
Sherieka Young, Sister of Tifara Samuels-Hall
Sherieka Young
“She noh really understand. She just di say ih ma dead. To me like ih noh really understand it yet because ih noh start ask fi ahn yet. When ih start ask fi ahn, then I noh know how we wah cope with that, but she deh with a loving family and we wah love she from now till forever.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
