Freak accident on highway leaves one dead

Edgar Otoniel Guerra

A family who lives on the Hummingbird Highway is grieving the death of one of their own. Thirty-nine year old Edgar Otoniel Guerra, a laborer of Armenia Village and a father of seven children, was killed in a freak accident as he waited for a bus on Wednesday.  It happened at mile fifteen on the Stann Creek Valley Road, shortly before one in the afternoon when Guerra was waiting for transportation on the roadside along with his father. The double rear wheels broke off the axel of a freightliner travelling in the opposite direction; it landed on the upper part of his body causing the instant death of the Armenia resident. His father, Domingo Guerra Yacab, who saw when the life of his son was snatched away, recounted the painful tragedy. News Five caught up with the family at the K.H.M.H. morgue.

Domingo Guerra Yacab, Father of the deceased

Domingo Guerra Yacab

“We were waiting for the bus but then the bus to Belmopan pass and it was too full so it couldn’t take us and we stayed standing at the side of the road, all of us, a lady, my son and I. So he was standing there, then the lady and then me. Shortly after a trailer was coming, looked like it was coming from Pomona but it was under full speed. A short distance from us one of the pairs of back tires unfastened and when I noticed I saw the tires coming towards us but it was already close and all I could’ve done was to shout at him but he didn’t take notice maybe it’s because he couldn’t understand me. And then the tire was coming with a speed, and then I saw that it was rolling under high speed and took my son away clean and landed near a light post. It was there that it threw my son upside down; he was all injured and dying. I ran and pick up my son in my arms but there wasn’t nothing that I could’ve done because he was injured badly, his body was limp and he couldn’t talk.  But I still shook him and I tried to give him C.P.R. and tried to talk to him but it was all vain because he was dying, he didn’t answer me.”

Andrea Polanco

“Was the driver driving very recklessly or do you think he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Domingo Guerra Yacab

“Yes, the truck was coming under a lot of speed because it kept on going some four hundred meters or feet from where the accident took place, it  ran for four hundred feet from where my son was killed and it wasn’t until he was notified that the tire had broken off and that was how he stopped because he wasn’t going to. So he stopped and turned back to us to check on the tire that was off and that was how he realized that the tire had killed my son to the side of the road. It was then he started asking what happened and I was angry so I told him ‘ look you are not looking at what you’re doin’  and then I told him some bad words in my anger and sadness. I said ‘ you killed my son because you are not paying attention’ and he said it couldn’t be  and asked how it happened. So I told him about the tire and how it killed my son.”

The postmortem conducted this morning listed the cause of death due to traumatic avulsion and liver injuries. The driver of the truck, thirty five year old David Morales is from Arenal in the Cayo District.  According to Dangriga Police, investigations are still on-going and the matter is expected to go before the D.P.P.