GREEN ISLAND, Hanover — Almost two years ago Ricardo Bayliss’s family members breathed a sigh of relief when he emerged with only a few injuries from a traffic mishap. On Tuesday afternoon, he wasn’t so lucky. He was one of three men killed in a crash on Norman Manley Boulevard in Hanover.

Bayliss was a construction worker reportedly working on a section of a major hotel project. On his way home from work, he was a passenger in car involved in a two-vehicle crash.

“This is the second one, and he did not make it. [In the October 2023 incident], he was coming from work and a Voxy hit him off the bike and sent him under a truck bottom,” his tearful sister Alicia Clarke told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday.

She said her brother only had cuts to his legs and injuries to his head from the 2023 incident.

On Tuesday when Clarke received news that her brother had once again been involved in a crash, she called his phone and a medical professional at the hospital answered. She said a doctor told her he was in serious condition and would need a CT scan.

“She said in case of anything, she will call me back. The next time she called me back, she said that they tried their best but he did not make it. He bled a lot. She said his lungs punctured,” relayed Clarke.

“I can’t take it. It was a similar time when he was coming from work that it happened again. I haven’t eaten from last night,” said the grief-stricken woman.

She said she and her brother shared a special bond as they were the only two of their mother’s six children who lived in Green Island; the others lived in Negril. Bayliss was the only male sibling while Clarke is the second of five girls.

“Down to Monday night me and him sit down out here and he said to me, ‘Sister, mi have something to seh to you but it has to wait till the next two weeks’ time before mi can seh anything’. I said to him, ‘Brother, it better if you tell me now because you are not going to remember’. Then yesterday mi get call seh him lay down ah Negril,” relayed Clarke.

“Him never got the chance to tell me anything,” she added mournfully.

Reports from the Green Island Police in Hanover are that about 5:50 pm, a brown Toyota Hilux truck was travelling westward toward Negril when, on reaching a section of the main road, the driver lost control of the vehicle. It reportedly veered off its path and collided with a green Toyota Corolla station wagon motor car driven by 47-year-old Owen Jackson of Cauldwell in the parish.

The police were alerted to the scene where Jackson and 65-year-old Calbert Hart of Cousins Cove in the parish were pronounced dead. Bayliss and the driver of the Hilux were transported to the hospital, where Bayliss died while undergoing treatment.

A fourth Green Island resident who was travelling in the Toyota Corolla was hospitalised.

Clarke had the difficult task of telling her mother, Angella Atkins, that Bayliss had died.

“It is not good. It is my only son, so it is not good for me. I don’t know how I am going to overcome this,” said the grief-stricken mother.