Cather­ine Copeland

Truck dri­ver Bal­ton Barn­well, who is charged with five counts of caus­ing death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving spent last night in jail af­ter his fam­i­ly was un­able to se­cure $.5 mil­lion bail ear­li­er in the day.

Barn­well,70, of Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad, waved to fam­i­ly mem­bers as he was es­cort­ed to a prison van to be tak­en to Re­mand Yard in Port of-Spain. He ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­di­ra Misir-Ho­sein in the San Fer­nan­do court charged with caus­ing death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving. Ra­jesh Ram­nar­ine, Rishi Ram­lo­gan, Sachin Ma­haraj, Sachin Singh and Ra­jku­mar De­onar­ine were killed last week Sat­ur­day when the van in which they were trav­el­ling was hit by a truck at Mos­qui­to Creek, La Ro­maine.

The vic­tims were on their way to the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain to at­tend the Balls of Fire crick­et event. Yes­ter­day was Barn­well's sec­ond court ap­pear­ance with­in a week. On Mon­day, he ap­peared be­fore Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Mark Welling­ton charged with us­ing ob­scene lan­guage at the scene of the ac­ci­dent. Dressed in a grey and white shirt and wear­ing a pair of blue jeans, Barn­well bowed his head as the charges were read to him yes­ter­day. In court yes­ter­day, Barn­well's lawyer Ramesh Deena said his client was sor­ry for what had hap­pened and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the be­reaved fam­i­lies.

Deena said Barn­well had been em­ployed with Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors as a lor­ry dri­ver for the past five years. He said his client, who has had his­to­ry of med­ical prob­lems, had his first brush with the law when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred last week Sat­ur­day. "My client has been in cus­tody since Wednes­day night and wants ap­proval to see his pri­vate doc­tor. He is will­ing to sub­mit to any con­di­tions the court may im­pose. He is not a flight risk so we are ask­ing for bail," Deena said. In con­sid­er­ing bail, Ho­sein asked Deena if his client as­sist­ed and co-op­er­at­ed with the po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 28.