RESIDENTS of Wild Street in east Kingston were hit with more bad news Tuesday when police confirmed that two more community members involved in the nasty Easter Sunday crash in Fern Gully, St Ann, succumbed to serious injuries sustained.

Police said eight-year-old student of Alpha Primary School in Kingston Kayla Brown, as well as 58-year-old Noreen Allen both died at hospital, pushing the number of fatalities from the crash to three.

Forty-nine-year-old Suzette Thomas was the first fatality which resulted from the crash. She died the same day of the incident.

Thomas’s daughter, Annika Gordon, said on Tuesday that the family and community were already struggling to cope after her mother’s tragic death, now made worse with the passing of Brown and Allen.

“We are not coping well but we just have to understand. My nephew [who was also in crash] is at the Bustamante Hospital for Children,” she said, adding that one of two other children admitted was discharged Monday.

On Sunday, March 31, the three deceased were among 23 passengers travelling in a minibus which was taking them on an outing to a water attraction in St Ann. Of the 23 passengers, 16 of them were children.

Sandra Gordon who was seated at the front of the bus beside the driver narrowly escaped with her life. She recalled during an interview with the Jamaica Observer how she thought she would die as she watched the bus run off the road and into a concrete wall.

“When I saw the bus landing into the wall, I said, ‘Yes Lord, this is it for me’. When the bus crash now and I saw that I could move and come out, the only problem I had was a terrible chest and back pain and my arm was cut as well as one of my toes,” Gordon told the Observer the following day after the crash.

She explained that the bus was travelling smoothly on its way to Thatch Hill River when, just as they passed Colgate, the bus picked up speed.

“The bus started to move fast before we entered Fern Gully. We started to scream and the driver, while trying to stop the bus, said, ‘Mummy, Mummy, mi can’t find no brake.’ He ended up swerving the bus on his side and the bus lick up in the wall,” Gordon said.

“The driver was pinned down in the bus. I came out of the bus and we tried to pull the side door to take out my brother and the children but we couldn’t take them out. A passer-by who was going to the beach stopped, and another bus stopped and people managed to take out the children.