Driver dead, passengers escape as car plunges off Cayo bridge

Almost anyone who drives a car has at some time fantasized about what he or she would do if their car plunged under water … and how you would manage to escape. Unfortunately, that grim fantasy became reality around two this morning on the wooden bridge connecting the twin towns of San Ignacio and Santa Elena.

Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
A crew from the Ministry of Works was busy replacing and reinforcing the guard rails on the wooden bridge where the Honda car broke through and overturned in the Macal River. Inside the vehicle at the time were its driver, twenty-one year old Darwin Pate, and his two passengers and friends: twenty year old Kimberly Curtiss and eighteen year old David Fernandez. Fernandez was able to free himself from the submerged vehicle and then rescue Curtiss, but Pate drowned after he reportedly became trapped as the fast flowing water quickly filled the car.

Ryan Pate, Brother of Deceased
“Fernandez said the current was very strong because when we tried to take out the car this morning, some of the guys who were trying to help us had to hold on to the car because the current was trying to take them.”

Ryan Pate says he knows that everything possible was done to try and save his youngest brother’s life.

Ryan Pate
“Fernandez, the passenger in the car, he told us that at the time of the accident when they approached the bridge, the car slipped off on the right hand side and my brother tried to bring it back on the straight way of the bridge and due to the slipperiness of the bridge, when he brought it back, the car just actually skated right off the other side and went sideways and turned over at the bottom of the bridge upside down under the water.”

“He said he managed to bust out one of the glass them, but he said that he had a hard time because he got pretty cut up and stuff where he was trying. He said that he tried a couple of times, but he couldn’t find Darwin due to the depth of the water because the whole car was almost submerged under water upside down. He said that he tried but no luck.”

Darwin’s body was found in the passenger seat. San Ignacio police are investigating to determine what caused Pate to lose control of his car, but his family believe wet conditions on the bridge caused the accident. People in the area told News Five that it is the fifth time that a vehicle has run off the bridge and in most of the cases it had just rained. At the time of this morning’s accident, a heavy downpour had just passed over the area.

Ryan Pate
“Actually you know what could be done to make it better, I am not sure, but it is not the first time that something like that has happened. We have other cars that went down in the river due to the slipperiness of the bridge, so if anything could be done to avoid something like this again that would be great because a lot of people in this whole Cayo and Santa Elena complain about that bridge due the slipperiness of it. A little rain comes and the board is so slippery, very slippery.”

Today the wooden bridge that takes you into San Ignacio was closed until repairs to the rails were completed. All traffic had to be diverted to the Hawkesworth Bridge, causing delays on both sides.