Sunday afternoon road smash
SUNDAY afternoons would usually see 14-year-old Omar McIntosh in his backyard doing chores but thanks to procrastination and his mother letting him off the hook, he cheated death.
At approximately 12:10 yesterday afternoon the driver of a blue Subaru motor car heading along Washington Boulevard, lost control of the vehicle which crossed the median at the Weymouth Drive traffic light before hitting another blue motor car which crashed into McIntosh’s back fence – right at the spot he should have been.
Michelle McIntosh told the Jamaica Observer that she was on her verandah waiting for her husband to get dressed to leave home when she heard a triple collision.
She said she knew it was bad, but called on Jesus several times before leaving to see what had happened.
“When I finally went in my backyard I saw smoke, smelt gas from the vehicle and the wall damaged and bricks laying in my yard. I ran through my other neighbour’s yard, went on the boulevard and saw the royal blue vehicle damaged and the driver in the car. I could see right into my yard. The other car was across the median and the driver was trapped in that vehicle, but a female came out,” McIntosh said.
“I thought, but God. My son was to have been out there pulling the bush off our back fence as he does, but today I had sent him in to do his homework. When I think that he could have been out there, or my husband and I could have been the ones driving there, my knees are weak and I am literally shaking,” McIntosh told the Observer.
Her son, on the other hand, said he is glad he chose to be lazy yesterday.
“I was going to go out there but I was lazy. Yesterday we passed a wall that a vehicle had hit into and I said it looked cool. My mom just told me to think before I speak and asked if I still think it’s cool. I never thought it could happen to us,” the young McIntosh said while holding his head in disbelief.
Meanwhile, a passer-by told the Observer that she became alarmed when she heard the sound of screeching tyres.
“Mi hear when the breaks go ‘rrrrppps’ and come cross the median, lick the other vehicle. From mi come ya so mi a say ‘unu nah call fire brigade, unu nah call fire brigade’, everybody just stand up. I am glad no one got hurt still cause a old iron dem ya,” said the lady who wished not to be named.
Two women coming from church, who did not want their names published, said they were walking on Washington Boulevard when they saw a car fly over their heads.
A bystander said she was in her kitchen when she saw the collision and witnessed the vehicle floating in the air before it landed in McIntosh’s fence.
“Ina mi kitchen mi deh enuh and see when it go up ina the air and go over ina the fence. It was coming down the road (towards Duhaney Park), lose control cross the median and hit the other car and send him in the fence. The one that cross the median, a man was trapped and a woman came out crying. The other man whose car end up in the fence was bleeding and he was visibly shaken,” said the woman.
That man eventually crawled from the vehicle and was assisted to the hospital by another motorist.
But, the trapped passenger had to be assisted by firemen from the Half Way-Tree Fire Station.
Jamaica Fire Brigade District Officer Norris Monroe said the firemen had to use a rescue tool called ‘the ram’ to pry the dashboard off the passenger’s leg and assist him to a police vehicle, after which he was transported to hospital.
Corporal S Thompson from Duhaney Park police, who was on the scene, refused to give details, directing the Observer to the Jamaica Constabulary Force Corporate Communications Unit (CCU). When contacted, CCU did not have details of the crash.