Fatal head-on bike crash involving cousins leaves family members mystified
CAULDWELL, Hanover — NOTHING could have prepared Annakay Jones for the trauma she is now undergoing, following the death of her father and a cousin during a bizarre accident involving two motorcycles which collided head-on on the Prospect main road in Hanover, last week.
Her father, 53-year-old fruit vendor Franklyn Jones, also called “Bobby”, and his cousin, Clive Jones, 51, also called “Abscess,” a ‘bike taxi’ operator, both of Cauldwell, Hanover, died at the scene of the crash as a result of injuries they sustained during what many persons described as a mysterious accident.
The police reported that on Monday, December 1, at about 6:30pm, the two cousins were driving their respective motorcycles in opposite directions along the Prospect main road, when they collided head-on.
But the fruit vendor’s daughter Annakay, a 27-yearold hotel worker, whose face was etched with grief as she spoke to the Jamaica Observer West earlier this week, questioned the account of the accident which occurred along a straight road at a time when visibility should have been good enough.
“Persons are saying it happened about 6:00pm or a little before. They are saying it was not dark, so that’s why it is so strange. It was not like it (road) is a corner, it was a straight road,” she argued.
Meanwhile, Nardia Reynolds, the ‘bike taxi’ operator’s spouse, also declared that the accident appeared weird. “It’s unbelievable. Right now we don’t even know if it happen how them say it happen.
I don’t know what to say. I am just confused right now,” Reynolds lamented, adding that the death of the motorcyclist has ended a relationship with her spouse that spanned 20 years and produced two children. “What upset me is seh him dead. They both died on the spot. We just have to figure a way to cope.”
In the meantime, Annakay who lives close to her beloved father in Cauldwell, recounted that on the day he died he had earlier promised to buy items at the supermarket, after returning from an errand. In fact, he was expected to return on time to prepare a meal and had already placed a pot of water on the stove.
A distraught Annakay also disclosed that since the tragedy she has lost a significant amount of weight, as she has not had anything substantial to eat.
“He was to come back come cook and him don’t come back and cook and from that me don’t eat any cook food. Me mawga, me don’t have no appetite,” she said.
She recounted that whenever she leaves for work, her two and-a- half- year- old daughter is usually left in the care of her father.
Now, she said, she has to send the infant, who is oblivious of her grandfather’s death, to stay with another family member, adding that the child keeps asking for him.
“Mi faint and go hospital and get injection and the following morning when mi daughter get up she went and called “Papa”! And when him no answer she come out and a go round there [his house] because is what she does every morning,” Annakay told the Observer West.
“He was her company and she was his company. Him send her to school when me gone work and him collect her from the taxi and stay with her until me come from work.
A did just me, she and him. Me don’t know what me going do now because see me build the place round there [a house] but me can’t stay here.
It is going bring back too much memory.” She disclosed that the autopsy proved that the two cousins, who were said to be very close, “had the same cause of death.”
“Me don’t know how but when the autopsy done is like they both died the same way. Seems like a mystery. Blunt hit to the chest that damage the inside and cut the heart string, that’s what it said.
No form of head lick,” Annakay lamented. She added: “Abscess run bike taxi and him never pass and nuh sey Bobby! Him never pass and don’t shout, or he would stop at the gate and he will come down (in the yard).
They were first cousins and were close.” Meanwhile, the burial date for both cousins is tentatively set for December 21 at the family plot in Cauldwell.
If everything goes according to plan, the grave-digging exercise will commence three days before.
Plans are also being made for the cousins, the sons of two brothers, to be laid to rest beside each other.
According to the police, motorcycle crashes have accounted for the majority of the 12 persons who have been killed on the roads in Hanover since the start of this year.