Just over two weeks after Highway 2000 crash victim Cornelia Montague-Clarke was laid to rest, her family is reeling from another road mishap that has claimed the life of her brother-in-law and left her sister, Susan Smart, unconscious in hospital.

The second crash occurred about 2:00 pm on the Burnt Ground main road in Hanover on Sunday.

According to a report from the National Road Safety Council (NRSC) yesterday, the 2010 Toyota Fielder motor car in which 29-year-old Smart, the father of her baby, and the infant were travelling crashed into a concrete utility pole.

The vehicle, the NRSC said, was travelling from the direction of Ramble towards Anchovy when it ran into a pool of water in a slight curve, veered off the road onto a grassy area before crashing into the utility pole.

The NRSC report did not name the driver or the infant, but members of Smart’s family said they knew him as Neil and that he was 30 years old. They identified the baby as Lavondra Birch, who, they said, is just over one year old.

The baby was not injured.

According to the NRSC, up to yesterday 230 people have died in 183 road crashes since the start of 2021.

On Thursday, May 20, Smart — who is now on a life support machine at Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James — was visibly shaken by the sight of her sister Cornelia in a casket at Meadowrest Memorial Gardens in St Catherine.

Cornelia and four other passengers in a minibus died on April 12 when the vehicle slammed into a truck and landed on top of a Jersey barrier after flipping several times on Highway 2000.

Yesterday, both women’s mother, Patsy McCubbin-Montague, was overcome with grief as she wondered aloud what dark forces had unleashed such tragedy on her family.

She related that just last Thursday she almost bled to death in her bedroom after a vein in her right leg ruptured. Her grandsons realised what had happened and called her son, Oneil Montague, who used his first aid training to help her.

“Mi sure seh mi never yet do nobody nuh wickedness, and mi nuh wish bad fi people. A dem suppen yah mek people a go seh crosses wuss dan obeah,” McCubbin-Montague reasoned.

“Remember seh a di other day mi lose a daughter, enuh, and now vein burst pon mi foot. Come again, accident and mi daughter deh pon machine. Yuh think dem suppen deh nice? A just har baby alone we can say is safe. Her babyfather dead and we are just hoping and praying that the good Lord will mek she come home. The devil a try, but him lose. Every time him try and feel him win, him just lose,” McCubbin-Montague said.

Her son, Oneil, says he is worried about his mother’s health, given that she is still grieving the loss of her daughter.

“Remember, I just lost a sister the other day, which was her daughter, so that hit her hard, and she nuh stop cry. A we haffi a try calm har down,” he said.

“Thursday, mi mother did inna a pool of blood. Mi haffi rush and put pressure pon the wound. She was inside and my nephew come out and seh ‘Patsy a bleed.’ All mi a put pressure pon it, it nah ease up,” he said.

Oneil said he received word of Sunday’s crash from his sister’s father, who had heard about it from someone else.

“We don’t even know what is going on fully,” he told the Jamaica Observer at their home on Jacques Road off Mountain View in St Andrew.

According to the NRSC’s Road Safety Unit, of the 203 road fatalities males accounted for majority — 176 or 87 per cent. Twenty-seven, or 13 per cent, were females.

The most vulnerable road users include motorcyclists, pedestrians and pillions. The NRSC has implored Jamaicans to exercise caution on the roads. It also expressed concern that a total of 51 road fatalities occurred during curfew hours from March 26 to June 7.