Derek Achong
A 36-year-old truck driver from Sangre Grande died in an accident in Chaguanas on Saturday night.
According to reports, around 10 pm Marcus Lezama was driving a truck and trailer with a shipment of frozen French fries along the north-bound lane of the Solomon Hochoy Highway, when he got a “bad-drive” near the Modern Electrical Limited building.
Lezama, of Foster Extension Road, Sangre Grande, allegedly swerved to avoid colliding with the vehicle and lost control of his truck. The truck and trailer fishtailed and went into a ditch that separates the highway from the Southern Main Road.
The shipping container partially detached from the trailer and fell on the cab of the truck with Lezama inside.
Fire officers responding to the scene removed Lezama from the wreckage and took him to the Chaguanas Health Facility for treatment. He was pronounced dead on arrival.
In a brief interview at her home in Malabar, Arima, yesterday, Lezama’s sister Yolande described her brother as hard-working and ambitious.
“We grow up hard but he always determined to make it,” his sister said, as she explained that their mother passed away when they were children and they were raised by relatives.
Yolande said her brother had finished building his house in Sangre Grande and was working on building a set of apartments to supplement his income.
“He always used to say that when he was ready to settle down and have children he wanted to have everything in place so they would not have to go through what we had to,” she said.
She said her brother always loved trucks and began driving them as soon as he turned 18 and got his driver’s permit.
“First he used to pull gravel and then he move on to trailer trucks. The only license he was missing was a pilot license,” she said.
A post-mortem is expected to be performed on Lezama’s body at the Forensic Science Centre in St James today.
Guardian Media understands that the wreckage remained in the same position up to yesterday afternoon, as officials of the transport company Lezama worked for surveyed the scene to determine the safest method to remove it from the deep ditch.
There were reports of traffic congestion along the highway, around 4 pm, as cranes were taken in to remove the wreckage.