People staring at the mangled wreck of one of the motor vehicles involved in yesterday's head-on crash on the Unity Hall main road, St James, in which three persons, including a police constable, died. (Photo: Horace Hines)

UNITY HALL, St James - A police constable stationed at the Cambridge Police Station in this parish was among three persons killed when two cars collided head-on along the busy Unity Hall road yesterday morning.

The deceased have been identified as 37-year-old Constable Lushington Wright of a Lucea, Hanover address; 23-year-old Demar Morris, unemployed of Piggot Street, Mount Salem, St James; and 19-year-old Kerri-Gaye Heron, of Hopewell, Hanover, who was employed at Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) located at Freeport, Montego Bay.

The police are theorising that the presence of oil on the road may have contributed to the accident.

"A lot of persons are saying the police officer was at fault. He was on the wrong side of the road, but the question was what led to the accident? We are seeing some oil on the road and that may have contributed to it (accident)," said Sergeant Amos Thompson, head of the St James Traffic Department, last night.

Sergeant Thompson said that while there were a number of accidents along the Unity Hall main road recently, which is classified as a black spot, that particular section of road "was not considered a black spot".

According to the police, yesterday at approximately 10:00 am, a white Toyota Corolla, driven by Constable Wright, collided with a green Toyota Corolla being driven by Morris.
According to persons who were early on the scene before a wrecker removed the mangled wreckage, the white motor vehicle, which was heading out of Montego Bay, ended up in the right lane where it crashed into the other car.

Constable Wright, Morris and his cousin, Heron, all died on the spot.

Pieces of metal and glass scattered in pools of blood on the road told the story of the gruesome accident, which attracted scores of onlookers.

Firefighters, who were quick on the scene, had to cut Morris and his lone passenger from the twisted steel in which they were trapped.

Yesterday, a grieving Lorna Williams, Heron's mother, had to be driven to hospital in a waiting ambulance after she fainted several times at the scene of the accident.

At the same time, Morris' mother, Joan Woolery, who was equally overcome with grief, recalled that her first of four children, who was unemployed, went to pick up her cousin to take to work - something he did every morning - when the accident occurred.

"I had just finished washing when I heard that my son met in an accident and died. They said that a policeman write him off. so me hear," Woolery lamented.

Yesterday, Senior Superintendent of Police in charge of the Traffic Department, Elan Powell, again issued a warning to motorists to desist from speeding and urged drivers to observe the road code.

"We have had a quiet period except this morning. Therefore, we want to implore motorists to take all necessary precautions on the road," said Powell. "Eighty per cent of our collisions are due to human error. That would imply if road users take greater precaution of their actions on the road we could reduce road collisions significantly. The plea is to implore road users to exercise more caution on the roads, reduce their speed and observe the rules of the road."

The St James traffic police have so far recorded 25 road causalties since the start of the year, while the number of fatalities across the island has climbed to 320 since the start of the year. Last year, 371 road fatalities were recorded by the police.

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