MORE than a month after Jamaica Defence Force Corporal, Douglas Lewis, was hit and killed by a Jamaica Urban Transit Corporation (JUTC) bus in the Cross Roads area of Kingston, his relatives still have unanswered questions about his death.

They are flabbergasted by the police’s account of the incident, and are disappointed with the lack of support from the army.

The police’s account of the incident, according to family members, is that Lewis was fatally struck when he unexpectedly stepped into the path of a bus at about 2:30 am on March 11. The JDF corporal, the family has been told, was drunkenly staggering in the direction of Up Park Camp at the time of the accident.

But according to them, Lewis didn’t drink and the authorities are now dragging his name through the mud.

“No one in the family knows him as a drinker,” Lewis’ sister-in-law, Jacynth Graveney, told the Observer. “They insist that he was staggering and as far as we know, he doesn’t drink.”

There were no witness to the accident, she argued, and therefore the bus driver’s account had not been corroborated.

“The only person near the area said he did not see, but heard the sound and then saw Douglas lying on the pavement,” she explained.

The family’s grief and suspicions have been exacerbated by what they perceive as the JUTC’s uncaring attitude.

They claim that the state-owned company has not contacted them since Lewis was mowed down, and that staff members contacted have claimed to have no knowledge of the incident.

However in an interview with the Observer, JUTC public relations manager, Errol Lee, was adamant that the company has a policy of reaching out to the families of victims who lose their lives as a result of accidents involving their buses.

The driver who was involved in the fatal accident, Lee said, was now the subject of police investigations and if he is found culpable then the bus company would take the appropriate action. But a month after Lewis’ death, the JUTC is still awaiting a formal police report on the incident.

“The JUTC is awaiting a formal police report. If the driver is found to be responsible then it would be a police matter,” Lee explained.

He added that if the company were also found liable, their parent company — Metropolitan Management Transport Holdings — has an insurance policy in place to deal with such matters.

And even as they grieve and probe Lewis’ death, family members say they have not received the level of support they had expected from the army in which he served for the last 13 years.

“The JDF seems to be washing their hands,” a grieving Graveney said.

The family contends that the JDF now sees its former Corporal as just a statistic and the military body has no desire to see justice done in his case.

Efforts to get a comment from the JDF’s information officer, Captain Charlene Steer, proved fruitless as she was said to be out of office.

Now Lewis’ family is trying to ensure that his good name is preserved.

They have set out to prove that he was not drunk at the time of his death and acquired the services of an independent pathologist, Dr Ademola Odunfa, who observed the post mortem on their behalf.

They have also sought to test Lewis’ blood-alcohol level at the time of his death but they are still awaiting those results as there is said to be a backlog of samples at the national blood bank.

“We are still waiting to see the results of the blood test,” Dr Odunfa told the Observer.

Corporal Douglas Lewis was the father of a two year-old son at the time of his death. He was buried in the district of Sanguinetti, Clarendon on March 22.