SHAS­TRI BOODAN

One man is dead, and 4 oth­ers are ward­ed in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal, af­ter a car col­lid­ed with a re­tain­ing wall in To­ba­go on Sun­day morn­ing.

As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer David Joseph Thomas in charge of To­ba­go said Ben­ton Charles, a res­i­dent of Bethes­da Trace, Bethes­da Vil­lage, Ply­mouth, was the front seat pas­sen­ger in a Nis­san Almera, when at around 5:20 am, the dri­ver lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle and rammed the left side of the  ve­hi­cle in the wall on the cor­ner of Shel­bourne Street and Bethes­da Trace.

Charles, an em­ploy­ee of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, was on­ly mo­ments away from his home when tragedy struck.

Fire­men used a hy­draulic-ex­tri­ca­tion res­cue tool to re­trieve the re­main­ing sur­vivors.  Oth­er ac­ci­dent vic­tims were tak­en by am­bu­lance to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal at Sig­nal Hill.

Zor­isha Hack­ett, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Bethes­da/Les Coteaux on the THA, and Coun­cil­lor Cer­ti­ca Williams Orr, Sec­re­tary in the of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary, were on the scene short­ly af­ter tragedy struck. 

"At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5:40 am, I re­ceived a phone call from three of my cousins telling me to re­spond quick­ly to the scene, and that there was a se­ri­ous ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing 4-5 young men at the cor­ner of Shel­bourne Street and Bethes­da Trace,” said As­sem­bly­man Hack­ett.

“What I heard from them is that this ac­ci­dent would have oc­curred around 5:17 am.  I quick­ly re­spond­ed and I saw the sil­ver Almera to­tal­ly de­stroyed.  Vil­lagers were out, moth­er and step­moth­er were on the scene, and per­sons were try­ing to come to terms with how se­vere the ac­ci­dent would have been and what would have caused it, be­cause it’s just 500 me­tres away from the ac­tu­al homes of the young men.  They were lit­er­al­ly home,” she told Guardian Me­dia.

“Peo­ple were try­ing to as­cer­tain what hap­pened in that short space of time, where they were com­ing from," she added.

As­sem­bly­man Hack­ett said the step­moth­er of the de­ceased is her cousin.

"Three of the oth­er young men seemed to be un­re­spon­sive at the time the am­bu­lance would have tak­en them to the hos­pi­tal. There was an­oth­er rel­a­tive of the young men, preg­nant [who was a by­stander and not in the ve­hi­cle], she had a pan­ic at­tack and the am­bu­lance had to take her… so sev­er­al in­ci­dents hap­pened at the same time," she said.

Hack­ett said the vil­lagers of the tight knit com­mu­ni­ty came out to ren­der sup­port to  fam­i­ly mem­bers af­ter the tragedy struck.