SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – Police yesterday said speeding was the cause of an accident along Pagon Drive in the parish which left a six-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother hospitalised.

The injured children are Paula Jay Forbes, who is nursing a broken hip, and Odian Chaplin, who suffered cuts and bruises to the face.

The 25-year-old driver of the car, Fabian Poyser, who hails from Goshen in the parish, has since been arrested and charged with two counts of dangerous driving.

Reports are that the six-year-old, her mother Joyclyn Forbes and her infant brother were walking along Pagon Drive (which bypasses the town centre) on their way to the nearby Faith Basic School, when a car driven by Poyser got out of control while going around a parked vehicle. The runaway car plunged into the opposite banking, injuring the two children.

Forbes told the Observer that she was holding the hands of her children when she saw the car hurtling towards her. She jumped back to avoid being hit but the children’s hands slipped from her grasp.

“It was very, very frightening to stand up and see a car coming straight at me and knowing that the two little children are right there with me,” the mother, who was receiving medication for headaches and a hike in blood pressure, told the Observer.

Investigating officer Corporal Noel Ford, of the Santa Cruz Police, said that available evidence suggested that “the car was driving at a very fast speed”.