Fifteen injured in Northern Highway accident
We start this evening’s newscast with a major traffic accident on the Northern Highway, at a dangerous curve around Mile eight. At least fifteen persons were injured, ten of them tourists visiting for the day. The vehicle carrying the tourists collided head on with a trooper heading to Belize City. There are no fatalities so far and Jose Sanchez has details of this story.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
A blue Isuzu Trooper and a White Ford Club Wagon collided between miles eight and nine on the Northern Highway a few yards from the old Williamson sewing factory just after noon today. There were ten passengers from the Carnival Cruise Line who were heading from Belize City on board the van and five Belizeans in the Trooper that were heading to Belize City.
Roger Espejo, Bystander on the Scene
“A tour van had just collided with an SUV. The tour van seemed to be headed in a northerly direction and the S.U.V. was headed towards Belize City from what we can decipher from the accident. A lot of injuries of varying degrees—fractures, abrasions, incisions—a lot of people were in obvious pain. When I arrived here the persons with the moist serious injuries had already been rushed to Belize City.”
A B.D.F. crew heading to Ladyville arrived at the scene a few minutes after the accident and aided the victims.
Sergeant Major David Victor Diego, B.D.F.
“I see a lot of people around and sirens blowing and I saw my doctor; the doctor for the Belize Defence Force and I saw his crew out here and that’s the reason I decided to stop because probably he need assistance and that’s why I stopped with my crew.”
Jose Sanchez
“What sort of assistance did you render?”
Sgt. Major David Victor Diego
“What happened basically, is that we came out here and he needed man power to actually remove the casualties from the vehicles that collided and that’s what we did, we provided the man power for that. So we could actually take them into the ambulance and so forth.”
Jose Sanchez
“Was it easy to remove them from the van?”
Sgt. Major David Victor Diego
“It was not really easy but what happened is that our soldiers are combat ready trained and all of us have first aid training but then they are combat ready so they have another level. So they know exactly what to do in situations such as these.”
Aside from broken glass, food on the windshield indicated a meal interrupted. The five victims in the trooper included seventeen year old Roman Williams who was catching a ride from Ladyville, Jennie Smith and her newborn, Tori Cox. A deployed airbag and a bottle of milk on the front passenger floor indicated how serious the injuries were. James Cox, father of the driver of the Blue Isuzu Trooper, said he spoke to his son Luke, from his hospital bed.
James Cox, Father/Grandfather of Accident Victim
“He says that he believes he fell asleep because he was on some medication and when he woke up he was in this accident and he just doesn’t know what really happened. I know he was on three days sick leave and definitely he was on but according to the accident, he just went straight across the road into the vehicle. the baby is in a critical condition. That’s all I could say.”
Jose Sanchez
“And you son and daughter-in-law?”
James Cox
“My son, according to the doctor, might have a broken arm and he has a bleeding in his stomach and I just would like to say that the only thing we could do, we leave everything in God’s hand.”
Jose Sanchez
“What sort of injuries did you see when you were moving the people?”
Sgt. Major David Victor Diego
“Well, basically people were complaining about hip injuries, to their knee injuries, thighs and calves and so forth. So it’s like the lower part of the body that they were complaining about except for one individual who said that he has his mouth torn up because he was kind feeding when the accident happened and so when the collision, the impact, he hit his face and everything on the chair in front of him.”
James Cox
“For all the crew, I felt a bad feeling for the whole crew from the ship and all the accident and all the family of what happened. Things happen these days and we just could ask God for the strength to hold with the things that we can’t do, we could give it all to God. So I just would like to apologize for the whole situation. If it was the medication and he fell asleep then there was nothing we could do.”
Jose Sanchez reporting for News Five.
The U.S. tourists injured in the incident are Jerome, Linda and Jacqui Williams, Lydia Gregory, Waltraud and Kenneth Vollmer, Kart Krassert and Andrea Scott. Two others, Stacy Lisbon and Marlise Krassert, are being flown out of the country for urgent medical attention. The Belizeans travelling in the trooper were Luke and Tori Cox, Jennie Smith, Roman Williams and another unidentified passenger.
