‘We tried our best to help’
DEVON PEN, St Mary — By their own accounts, O’Neil Dixon and Craig Love did as much as they could to assist 56-year-old Lancelot Wilson and 13-year-old Jordan Bowen after the drink truck in which Wilson and the boy were travelling broke the rail of a bridge in this community and plunged about 50 metres into the Ugly River late Friday night.
“I was at home and I heard a terrible rumbling sound and then a loud sound, Dixon told the Jamaica Observer Saturday morning.
“I run over and I see a number of persons and a truck on the bridge, and the driver say ‘a truck drop down a the river’. When I go down there, I see the little boy on the left on the stone alongside the truck and the driver on the other side. Dem drop out a di truck. We tek up the little boy and carry him up to the road and a man name Rusty, who was driving a car, tek the boy to the hospital. Then we go for the driver and we tek him up and another man tek him to the hospital. We try our best with them. This morning when mi get up mi hear seh dem dead; mi never want dem dead but we try our best,” added Dixon as he and Love attempted to repair an electricity wire close to their homes that was damaged in the mishap.
Love, who lives adjacent to the bridge, told the Observer that he was at home when the tragedy occurred.
“When I heard the sound I went out and saw the truck in the river, and we tried to help them. We took up the little boy and then the driver and they took them off to the hospital. Rusty took the boy to the Annotto Bay Hospital and later another driver took the truck driver,” Love related.
The Castleton police, who are investigating, told the Observer that Wilson and Bowen were returning to Kingston, after delivering soft drinks at a depot in Annotto Bay when the mishap occurred.
Bowen died while undergoing treatment, while Wilson was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
“The cause of the accident is not known as yet,” a cop at the Castleton Police Station said.
Wilson lived at Cockburn Avenue in Seivwright Gardens, Kingston 11, while Bowen is from Temple Hall.
