Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

A Ja­maican na­tion­al is lucky to be alive, af­ter crash­ing his car in­to an elec­tri­cal con­trol room in Freeport on Mon­day night.Res­i­dents of the area, who are still com­ing to terms with the deaths of two young men from their vil­lage–Shel­don Ram­di­al and Ke­shav Ra­goo–who died on Feb­ru­ary 22, when the car they were trav­el­ling in burst in­to flames on the South bound lane of the Freeport fly­over, rushed to re­move the man from the ve­hi­cle, in fear that it would catch afire.

The man, iden­ti­fied at the scene as Kevin Smith, ran off the road and in­to the elec­tri­cal pan­el room in the Are­na Recre­ation Ground. Eye­wit­ness­es said he was head­ing east along the road­way when he veered off the road and in­to the con­crete struc­ture which pow­ers the lights at the recre­ation ground.Al­so in the car was an Are­na res­i­dent, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Neil. The man sus­tained cuts to his face and neck and was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by fam­i­ly mem­bers.

Dale Ho­sein, a res­i­dent who wit­nessed the ac­ci­dent, gave his ac­count of how the in­ci­dent hap­pened."Me and my friend were com­ing down the road, when we saw this car ap­proach­ing, he was dri­ving on the wrong side of the road, the right side, with­out any lights on, he was dri­ving very fast and right in front of us, he just run off the road in­to the pan­el room."Ho­sein said he be­lieved the man might have fall­en asleep at the wheel.

"I think he fall asleep while dri­ving and he just ram straight in­to it (pan­el room)...we thought for sure he was dead af­ter that."Re­al­is­ing Smith was trapped in the car, the res­i­dents used a hack­saw to cut the door post and free him.Of­fi­cers from the Cou­va Fire Sta­tion and a T&TEC crew re­spond­ed to the ac­ci­dent.