TWO women — one of whom was pregnant — were killed yesterday after being struck by a car as they walked on the sidewalk along Washington Boulevard in Kingston.

Eyewitnesses said the two women were hit minutes after they disembarked from a Jamaica Urban Transit Corporation (JUTC) bus along the busy thoroughfare near the entrance of Weymouth Drive. The driver of the blue Starlet that ran them over, eyewitnesses said, lost control of the vehicle, which spun twice on the rain-dampened street before climbing the embankment and plowing into the two women.

“Him a come hard and pick up a skid after him come through the light. The car spin two time before him lick down the two young lady,” said one man who claimed to have witnessed the accident.

According to police reports, the driver of the ill-fated vehicle was taken to hospital and was in stable condition up to press time. The pregnant woman was taken to hospital but was pronounced dead. The body of the other woman, who was killed on the spot, lay hideously in a mangled heap at the crash site until it too was removed.

Her face was bloodied and from the angle of her body, it appeared that her right hand and left leg were broken during the impact. She also had multiple head injuries, with blood seeping through her nose and mouth.

Close inspection of the tyres of the blue Starlet revealed that they were almost bare. The right front wheel was detached from the vehicle and lay flat on the roadway.

And in a separate mishap along the Boulevard, an International trailer fell almost 20 feet, after a collision with a car, and ended up in the gully adjacent to the Duhaney Park Shopping Centre. There were no fatalities in that incident but the drivers of both vehicles were taken to hospital.

A man who claimed to have witnessed the accident told the Observer that the driver of a Honda Civic car was approaching Washington Boulevard from Bob Marley Boulevard when the collision occurred.

“The left wheel (of the truck) alone catch the car. The driver a the car only get two cut and walk out of him car,” the man said.

The driver of the trailer was not so lucky — he was pinned down in the vehicle after it fell into the gully. Flattened grass showed the path the trailer took along the concrete sidewalk, and then along 10 feet of earth, before hitting the murky waters of the gully.

One man, who said he saw the accident occur, said it appeared that the truck driver had sustained serious leg injuries as his legs hung loosely when he was being lifted out of the gully.

“Him get a bad blow down a him legs and me feel say him two foot (were) broken,”another bystander said.

There have been 232 fatal crashes so far this year and 250 persons have lost their lives over the same period.