Accident victim contradicts police report
Seventeen year old Wilword Banner lies in the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital with a fractured upper jaw and scrapes to his face, chest and hands. The youth, who was riding his bicycle on the Boom Road to the Northern Highway to train for a school bike race, was knocked down around nine thirty, Sunday night. Today, the third form student of Wesley College told News Five that contrary to what police are reporting, the driver of the car, forty-six year old Karim Esquivel, did not stay at the scene to render any kind of assistance to him. In fact, he alleges Esquivel was more concerned about pulling his vehicle out of the bushes. He says he was rescued by kind passers-by later on.
Wilword Banner
“The car just hit the bike from behind by the back wheel and it flung me on the side that the bike flipped and I fell all the way into the bushes. I forced my way on the street, to get some assistance.”
Q: “Wilword, did the driver render any kind of assistance to you?”
Wilword Banner
“None, none, none at all, he more tried to get assistance to get his car from out of the bushes.”
Q: “So how did you manage getting here to the hospital?”
Wilword Banner
“A good Samaritan, Raymond Anderson from Ladyville, he passed in a pickup with a lot of other passengers in the pickup. He passed me but turned back after a while and they took me and offered a prayer on the way to the B.D.F. Camp where an ambulance later came to me.”
Banner says just before he was hit, he saw the vehicle speeding, and swerve, as it took the curve just two miles past the bridge on the Burrell Boom Road. According to Banner, Steven O’Brien, the driver’s passenger, told him that Esquivel was drunk and that he had cautioned the man to be careful.
Wilword Banner
“The sideman in the car told the driver that he saw someone riding a bike but he was so intoxicated, he did not even care. I couldn’t say car, but notice and by the time I turned back around I was already on the ground bleeding.
After I fell, I was just lying there for a moment due to the solid knock and I heard the driver ask the sideman, Steven O’Brien if I was dead? He ask, the young man dead, the young man dead, the young man dead? Then he said, no. I sat up and tried to crawl on the highway, the road.”
Banner is scheduled to be released from K.H.M.H. on Wednesday.
When we contacted Inspector Martin Yama, the Head of Traffic Branch, for comment on Banner’s account which contradicts that of the police, Yama told us that the report they received from police in Burrell Boom was that Esquivel stayed on the scene to assist Banner in getting to the hospital. Esquivel was charged yesterday with a number of traffic offenses including failing to report an accident and driving a vehicle that carried no license or insurance.
