Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Four fam­i­lies in To­ba­go were thrown in­to mourn­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter an ac­ci­dent along the Claude Noel High­way claimed the lives of five peo­ple.Killed in the ac­ci­dent were Al­loy Duke, 50, of Buc­coo; Fer­nan­do Stew­art, 36, and his un­cle Kris­ton Stew­art, 50, Arnes­ta Hamil­ton-Williams, 38, of Pa­tience Hill, and Steven Win­ches­ter, of Sig­nal Hill.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian un­der­stands that Kris­ton Stew­art was liv­ing in Ger­many and had re­turned home for the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions. He was ex­pect­ed to re­turn to Ger­many next week.Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 4 am yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Duke was dri­ving east along the high­way in his pur­ple Maz­da 3 SUV when, on reach­ing the in­ter­sec­tion at the Or­ange Hill traf­fic light, he over­took a line of cars and col­lid­ed with a green Lancer dri­ven by Fer­nan­do Stew­art, which was head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.Duke was the lone oc­cu­pant of his ve­hi­cle, while the Stew­arts, Hamil­ton-Williams and Win­ches­ter were oc­cu­pants of the oth­er ve­hi­cle.

Five dead in To­ba­go ac­ci­dent

All of the vic­tims died on im­pact.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, ACP for To­ba­go, Hugh Lovell, ap­pealed to peo­ple to be care­ful on the roads dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son. He al­so re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that po­lice of­fi­cers would be at strate­gic points in To­ba­go dur­ing the sea­son and would be con­duct­ing road­blocks and ad­min­is­ter­ing breathal­yser tests.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands po­lice used CCTV cam­eras to as­cer­tain the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the ac­ci­dent.The Scar­bor­ough Traf­fic Branch is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.