Driver dies trying to avoid pedestrian
Separate traffic accidents over the weekend have left one man dead and thirteen people injured. According to police, the first incident occurred just before nine on Saturday morning. Officers in Independence were called to the junction of the Southern Highway and the Georgetown Village road where they saw an extensively damaged Ford Ranger pickup on the side of the road and a tow head truck pulling a trailer a short distance away on the same side. Investigations have revealed that the pickup, driven by thirty-six year old Erwin Casimiro, collided into the tow head and trailer driven by forty-one year old Daniel Salazar. While Salazar emerged unscathed, his passenger, thirty-nine year old Rose Argentina Santos, broke her right leg. The three children in the Ford pickup, ages twelve, ten and nine, suffered minor injuries. Up to news time tonight, no one had been charged in connection with the incident.
Nine hours later, the weekend’s second crash had a less fortunate outcome. Around six-fifteen that evening, Sand Hill resident Erwin Milligan was behind the wheel of his Ford Escort heading towards Ladyville when between miles twenty and twenty-one, he spotted a man on foot in the middle of the road. Milligan’s passenger, twenty-four year old Wayne Grinage, has reported that in order to avoid knocking down the pedestrian, his friend drove off the road and crashed into the nearby bushes. Because he was not wearing a seatbelt, the impact catapulted Milligan from the cab, causing fatal injuries. Grinage was treated for minor abrasions at the K.H.M.H. and released. Investigators say the pedestrian who was walking in the road has not been located.
The weekend’s third incident took place just outside Belize City and as I discovered today, that all too familiar practice of overtaking without signalling may be to blame.
Anita Bilal, Wife/Mother of Victims
“I was at home. All I heard was bang, band and I heard my husband bawl but the bawling he bawl is not a happy bawl, it’s a cry for help. It’s a very disturbing bawl so when I look up I see the vehicle; I say it’s not him because he just left from here.”
Fifty-two year old welder Ysusf Bilal and his twenty-four year old son Sharef Bilal had just left their home at mile three on the northern highway to go do a job in the Belama Area but as the family’s pickup truck made a left turn to go into Chetumal Avenue, they collided with a van driven at the time by B.D.F. Corporal twenty-seven year old Erwin Wade.
Ysusf Bilal, Victim, Traffic Accident
“I look back and I never see nothing right and I drive and I slowed down because I know that it is a dangerous curve. A person di come out and I slow down and I di go in and before I know it, I feel the vehicle the spin right and I came out because I feel like mi back bruk. I have wah feeling inna mi back and then I look for him and when I conscious he di come out of the back of the pickup full with blood right, all his hands and all his face.”
Sharef Bilal, Victim, Road Traffic Accident
“Just bandage pan mi finger and mi head and just a slight pain pan mi leg like mid-section range. Besides that everything okay.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“So it’s just basically cut wound you received?”
Sharef Bilal
“Basically. No lot of trauma, a lee bit of bleeding here and there beside that everything okay.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“How traumatic was this?”
Sharef Bilal
“Everything happen fast so I was right there inna di pan of the truck and by the time the vehicle flip over…dah just like my father just said.”
Belize City Traffic police are still investigating to find out what caused the crash but preliminary investigations reveal that both vehicles were heading in a northerly direction when the van attempted to overtake the pickup truck.
Ysusf Bilal
“I glad I am alive, I glad my family alive, I am glad nothing serious never happen.”
But as police continue to investigate the accident, Anita Bilal made a special appeal to authorities to replace the pedestrian crossings that were removed from the stretch of the highway during a recent resurfacing.
Anita Bilal
“Please if the government could put back the pedestrian walk, the two bump that the catholic church have paid for because when I ask them, they say that the northern highway have to fix. Well the northern highway have already fix and like how the northern highway haven’t got no potholes again like first so the vehicles is just voom, voom, voom.”
Twenty-six year old Hirian Good, twelve year old Samantha Good and sixteen year old Matthew Good, who were travelling along with the Bilal family at the time of the accident, escaped with minor abrasions.
