Fifteen months have slid by since the horrific crash involving a liquor truck that went over a bridge at Devon Pen in the south-eastern section of St Mary, and landed in the renowned Wag Water River.

The driver of the truck, which often delivered products manufactured by Red Stripe, and a boy aged 13, died at the scene.

But long after, the rails of the bridge which were badly damaged by the impact of the heavy-duty vehicle, are still mangled, thus posing a threat to motorists who traverse the roadway, part of the thoroughfare called the Junction Road.

Now though, the people of the area, while wanting the barriers to be repaired, use underneath as an area for relaxation, even having picnics, and the occasional party, while existing in an environment of dark clouds hanging overhead where the truck made its drop from around 20 metres.

Folks in the area will even tell you that the truck driver, 56-year-old Rastaman Lancelot Wilson, had two weeks before stopped the same vehicle on the bridge on his way from Kingston to Annotto Bay, around 12 kilometres away, got out of it and looked down on the soothing water from one of Jamaica’s primary rivers, sliding toward the Caribbean Sea, and said for some to hear: “The water look sweet. Me waa go down dey one day.”

As fate would it, on the night of October 17, 2020, Wilson, said to be racing with another vehicle heading to Kingston from Annotto Bay around 10:50, lost control of the truck after he, eyewitnesses have said in police and informal statements, overtook another vehicle and in a failed attempt to steady his ride, cleared the rail and dropped into the river.

Citizens said that Wilson fell though the windshield, landed in the river and drowned before he could be rescued.

The boy, Jordon Bowen, who like Wilson was not wearing a seat belt, fell on rocks and was badly broken up.

A container with opened liquor and drinking cups was found in the cabin of the truck, one eyewitness told the Jamaica Observer.

“By the time we rushed down to the river to see if we could save anybody, we see the two of them dead,” said Rushain Lammie, who lives close to the river.

“A man was in the river bathing right at the spot where the truck drop just five minutes before. Him say him was in the water fi a long time and a vibes reach him say him fi come out now. So him leave. Is a place where whole heap a we bathe every day. I bathe there often, but of late, the deeper part of the river get shallow because some Government trucks a move out the big stone dem, saying dem ago use the stones fi stop the sea from erode Annotto Bay. But them only mek the river no good again,” Lammie said, as two women, naked as flames, cooled their anatomies down around 25 metres from the crash spot.

It took almost nine months for the truck, which was removed from the river within days, to be taken off a piece of flat land used by village youth as a miniature football field.

Apart from bathing, the river is a regular spot for washing clothes, items of which were spread out on rocks to dry when this newspaper visited last Sunday.

Vibrations injected fear in some below the bridge as large trucks passed by overhead sending questions through the brain of how sturdy the structure was. All this time, the rich aroma from a nearby pig pen, not seen from an initial search for the source, was hard to ignore.

Across from the pig pen, finally found, women in b…. rider shorts, and men accustomed to dropping their trousers and exposing their underwear, prison style, searched for the perfect spot to settle.

Upon leaving the river for land, and in the midst of a dwelling cluster, a local businessman was fully into the groove of accommodating and entertaining people who have been faithful to him at his businesses up the road at Friendship Gap. From a short distance away, curry goat, jerk chicken, roast fish, and jerk pork could be observed.

An arrangement seemed to have been made also for a local musician to level the vibes, surprisingly, playing mainly tunes from yesteryear to a largely youthful audience, most moving to the beat without masks.

For a handful of those who decided to avoid the water, but sit on huge rocks while downing their favourite spirits, they too had their challenges – that of trying to, first, identify the source of biting insects, which crept, initially unfelt and unseen to various parts of the anatomy, before settling in sensitive lower areas of the body and issuing their statements.

The conclusion was that the source of worry was straight overhead — imposing trees energised by the river, but full of the little ones which, perhaps, were protesting the abuse of their space by humans.