THE crash yesterday morning that claimed the lives of four National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) employees was so nasty that hours after the wreck of the pickup truck in which they were travelling was removed from the Ewarton main road in St Catherine, people stood at the death spot staring in shock.

“It never pretty at all,” said Bevon Dunn who was driving the trailer into which the NSWMA vehicle slammed head-on about 5:15 am, metres from the Ewarton Cemetery.

People at the scene said the impact crushed the body of 38-year-old Alvin Mitchell, the driver of the NSWMA vehicle. Everett Campbell of Wellington Avenue in Kingston; Ricardo Salmon, 28; and Michael Mitchell of Ferry district in St Andrew, also died in the crash which resulted in 13 other people being hospitalised.

“I just see like him overtake about two vehicles and was trying to get back into his lane, but he didn’t have enough time,” Dunn said of the driver of the NSWMA pickup. “Me couldn’t even do anything; the truck just run straight up in my vehicle.”

One of the NSWMA workers was killed after he was thrown from the vehicle, while another died on the way to hospital, the Observer was told.

Some of the injured persons were reportedly treated and released from the Kingston Public and Spanish Town hospitals yesterday evening.

Neither Dunn, an employee of Scarmo Trucking Limited, nor his female passenger sustained any major injuries in the crash.

Head of the Traffic Department, Superintendent Radcliffe Lewis speculated that the collision appeared to have been a result of speeding and careless driving on Mitchell’s part.

“The driver of the NSWMA truck, he was going to St Ann and apparently was in some haste,” said Lewis. “He reportedly overtook a loaded trailer and ran straight into another trailer that was proceeding in the opposite direction.

“My observation so far is that it is a combination of both speeding and careless driving. And what is amazing is that the NSWMA truck has no fixed seats and the workers were standing inside there with the machines,” Lewis said, noting that the NSWMA driver was also overtaking at a section of the road marked with an unbroken white line.

Lewis said that in light of the crash he will be recommending that the authorities implement regulations ensuring that all motor vehicle passengers are seated while their vehicles are in motion.

Yesterday, tyre marks, splatters of motor oil, and a shattered concrete pathway were silent testimonies of the deadly ordeal. The twisted NSWMA truck was removed from the scene by the time the Observer arrived, but the crooked trailer remained, a section of the fender completely torn off.

Dunn, who was obviously still in shock as he watched wrecker operators prepare to haul away his vehicle, said he tried to assist in the removal of the injured NSWMA workers but confessed that the gory scene was too overbearing.

“It was too traumatic, I couldn’t handle it,” he said.

One of four female NSWMA workers, in describing the scene, said, “Me and that youth [Alvin Mitchell] grow up together like brothers. The way how me come see him crush up and stay this morning, not even my enemy I would want that for.”

Executive director of the NSWMA, Joan Gordon-Webley, was equally distraught about the deaths. She said the employees opted to travel in the truck instead of a bus designated to transport them and about 30 others to work on the Northcoast Highway Improvement Project.

“A number of the seats in the bus were left empty because some of them had gone to drive in the truck. I don’t know why they left out of the bus,” Gordon-Webley said before letting out a long, heavy sigh.

Contrary to Lewis’ claim, she said the bed of the NSWMA vehicle was properly railed and that it had fixed seats inside. She confessed, however, that she has on numerous occasions had to warn the agency’s drivers about their unsafe conduct on the road.

“Your heart goes out when something like this happens to you because it keeps coming home how often you speak [to them] about these things… Every time this happens you get the unions on top of you and they don’t understand how much you talk to them, how much you beg them,” she said, adding that she recently had to fire two operators for driving while intoxicated.