Relatives and other residents scramble to retrieve goods at the crash site. (Photo: Kimberley Peddie)

DARLISTON, Westmoreland — As he watched a team of seven doctors desperately try to save his father’s life on Friday, Glenroy Pinkney began to pray.

“I started to say, ‘God, if it is your will, let it be done and please help me. Mek him stay alive!’ But after that the doctors talking to us and I realised he didn’t make [it],” the distraught man told the Jamaica Observer. “Mi cyah find the words to explain. He was my everything, my mom and my dad.”

His father, 67-year-old market vendor Errol “Mass Tim” Pinkney, died from injuries received when the truck in which he and other vendors were travelling plunged about 150 feet into a precipice about 5:00 am Friday. Six others were injured.

Even as they worried about relatives in need of medical care, family members made their way down the steep incline and scrambled to recover some of the precious cargo from which they make their living.

For many in the community, they knew at least one person on the truck that never made it to its destination.

Former market vendor Donna Wellington was among friends of the deceased and injured who wept bitterly at the scene. The driver of the truck remains hospitalised and she is particularly worried about him.

“Him is so good to us. Him get out him bed all 3 o’clock and carry us to the Savanna-la-Mar market,” Wellington told the Observer.

“I am so sad this morning. I was in my bed when I got the call, so I just rush out and get a taxi and come out. All of us travel on the bus; everybody on the bus is my good friend,” she said.
Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Eastern Daniel Lawrence said most of the injured farmers are from Pinnock Shafton, where two Petersfield school boys — Zakeil McIntyre and Adjournie Robinson — died in a crash last November.

WELLINGTON… everybody on the bus is my good friend

Robinson’s mother is said to have had produce on the truck and was waiting to be pickedup by the ill-fated vehicle and taken to market Friday morning.

“They are still not buried and now this. Just imagine what is going through the community — unimaginable loss. We are definitely feeling it,” said the Member of Parliament.
“The entire Darliston area, even Jamaica, feels it and it is really a great loss,” he said.

He has pledged to lobby for a retaining wall to be built as residents have explained that there are often traffic mishaps in the area where Friday morning’s crash occurred.

“Anything misses [that corner] it gone over there,” Lawrence said.
Pinkney’s death brings to seven the number of males from the community who have died as a result of traffic crashes between last October and Friday.

Councillor Jerome Bacchas (People’s National Party, Darliston Division) told the Observer that the community is overburdened by these fatalities.

“It is not easy on the community, family, nor myself,” he said, clearly distraught.
“It is not easy to be having so many funerals back-to-back in this community. I pray that one day all of this will cease,” the councillor lamented.

While Bacchas acknowledged an eyewitness’s account that the truck appeared to be having mechanical difficulty before the crash, he also pointed to the role inadequate lighting could have played.

“I am appealing to [Jamaica Public Service] to give us the street lights that they have promised us four years ago so we can light this thoroughfare from Darliston to Content,” he urged.

All that will likely be of little comfort to Glenroy Pinkney, whose grief over his father’s death is made all the worse because he feels guilty. He told the Observer that he had persuaded his father to postpone plans for a Christmas wedding to his mother.

“I told him to wait until Easter for the wedding,” Glenroy said as he wept.
According to the police report, the crash was caused by a mechanical issue with the truck.