MANDEVILLE, Manchester — A mangled tractor trailer and cement covering a hillside painted a grim picture of how tragedy unfolded on the crash-prone Spur Tree Hill main road just west of here on Tuesday, leaving two people dead.

Police identified the deceased as Jordan Sterling, 25, a truck driver and resident of Patrick Drive, Kingston 20, and Yanice McLeggon, 21, a welder and resident of Queens Lane in Central Village, St Catherine.

Police said Sterling was driving a tractor trailer laden with cement and McLeggon was a passenger in the unit when Sterling lost control and the vehicle overturned multiple times. Both McLeggon and Sterling were flung from the vehicle during the crash.

The impact of the crash woke up residents of Eglinton about 5:00 am as the dismantled unit came to a stop mere metres from houses in their community.

One resident said the flickering of a light and a loud sound signalled trouble nearby.

“I was sleeping and I heard a hard hit and something like a scrape and like it slammed into something. Then I saw the light dimming and then I got up and heard everybody saying ‘Truck turn over!’ When I came outside it was just dust; like when you see fog. Everything down there was fogged up, I couldn’t see anything [clearly],” he said.

He described the horrific scene he saw when he went to the crash site.

“The [driver] was there with his hand on his face. Only his hand was moving and you could hear him [moaning] in pain like he was asking for help, but we couldn’t move him, because we didn’t have anything to put him on. The lady was there laying down, no movement,” said the resident.

District Officer Trevor Robinson at the Mandeville Fire Station said the brigade received a call shortly after 5:00 am, alerting firefighters to the crash.

“On arrival [we] saw a trailer overturned over the precipice. After carrying out a search of the area, one person was found alive and another person found with no sign of movement,” he said.

He lauded the efforts of firefighters who extricated the two victims of the crash.

“Our men really need to be commended. We arrived at a good time… When the situation was assessed we realised that we needed a team of persons to carry out the rescue, so [they] were deployed and they were excellent in what they did,” said Robinson.

The Spur Tree main road links Mandeville and its environs to St Elizabeth and points west. Heavily laden, slow-moving trucks often hinder traffic on the steep, difficult hill, and there have been a number of fatal crashes involving trucks over the years.

In a February 3, 2022 Observer story headlined ‘Defective, overweight vehicles and inexperienced drivers to blame for Spur Tree crashes’, Dr Lucien Jones, vice-chairman of the Road Safety Council, and a senior police officer said some drivers need training in how to manoeuvre the steep hill.

“Training is a central part of it, in terms of getting your general licence or your trailer licence,” Dr Jones said at that time.

He said that, based on crash reports from the police, some drivers involved in accidents on the Spur Tree Hill main road do not engage in low gear early enough to slow the vehicle.

“[They] depend rather on brakes which can fail you, especially with very heavy vehicles and turning around those curves often leads to the kind of news reports that we get about crashes, both non-fatal and fatal,” he said.

“The number one warning to the drivers is to be extremely careful when they are going down that road and also for those who are coming up the road, because you never can tell what may happen around those curves,” he added.

On Tuesday Adave Dockery, a truck driver, told journalists at the crash scene that the steep descent on Spur Tree Hill is a reminder to drivers to engage a low gear early.

“This hill is very famous and what people need to do, especially truck drivers, is just obey the sign that is at the top of the road. I am a truck driver, but not the big unit. I drive a seven-tonne unit and it always tell us to use the lower gear. Because the thing about it, if the bigger unit starts to pick up speed it is very hard to engage the lower gear and the truck will get away from you and this hill has no mercy and it will take your life,” said Dockery.

“You just have to exercise caution and obey the rules of the road code. Obey the speed limit, use your low gear and come down the hill. [If not it] can take your life and also endanger the lives of others. People want to see their relatives return home after a long day of work and if you don’t do what you have to do, your family is going to miss you and you are also going to allow people to miss their family members. So just exercise caution,” he added.

He is reiterating calls for the Government to fast-track the construction of Spur Tree Hill Bypass.

It is very urgent, because this hill has no mercy, especially when it is wet or damp… The hill naturally is a threat for bigger units, so we just have to exercise caution as much as possible,” he said.

A mangled tractor trailer is seen off the Spur Tree Hill main road in Manchester on Tuesday morning.(Photo: Kasey Williams)

The crash scene off the Spur Tree Hill main road in Manchester on Tuesday morning (Photo: Kasey Williams)

A broken utility pole on the Spur Tree Hill main road in Manchester, the result of Tuesday morning’s crash. (Photo: Kasey Williams)