LILLIPUT, St James – Carmen Darnel-Belnavis and her mother did not follow their usual routine on Tuesday, and that just may have saved their lives.

A truck laden with cement rammed into Darnel-Belnavis’s restaurant in Lilliput, St James, shortly before 8:00 am. The truck was part of a two-vehicle collision that left two people dead and two others injured.

Darnel-Belnavis’s restaurant suffered the brunt of the damage to the structure that also houses an auto parts shop and a bar. She wasn’t in her place of business as she had an appointment in Montego Bay. She left out earlier than needed, she said.

“My mom is okay; she wasn’t in there. She always come out there while I cook in the morning but this morning when I was leaving I tell her not to go out there. I just think something was going to happen and this is what happened,” Darnel-Belnavis told the Jamaica Observer at the scene.

She said she was in Montego Bay when she got the call that her business place had been extensively damaged. She is now rethinking her decision to run her business from that spot.

“This makes about five times that vehicles have crashed in the [light] posts or into building,” she said, even as she pointed out that they would usually come from the other direction.

“I am not planning to do anymore business in that part because it is not safe for my life,” said a dejected Darnel-Belnavis. “I’m so frustrated because it’s my living; but then I leave everything to God.”

The driver of the truck said he tried his best to avoid the devastating collision. According to him, a black Toyota Voxy which was travelling in the opposite direction swerved into his path as he approached a section of the Lilliput road known as Bob Man.

“When him push out of the line of traffic I was trying to avoid him and pull to the soft shoulder, and him still come lick it,” he told the Observer.

He only agreed to speak if he was not identified by name. He said he lost control of the truck because of the collision.

“From him lick it, a there it go; gone. I have no control over it and it just end up in the building. It’s just one of those days,” the truck driver lamented.

The Voxy was a crumpled wreck after the crash. Two of the four people on-board died, including 30-year-old Portia Anglin from Minnesota, United States of America.

The young woman was reportedly staying at a hotel in Trelawny with family and friends. She was on her way back from Montego Bay, where she had gone to pick up an item, when the crash occurred. It is said this was her first-ever trip outside of the USA.

The driver of the Voxy, who had to be extricated by firefighters, also succumbed to his injuries. Up to late afternoon his name had not been ascertained. The two other passengers in the vehicle were taken to hospital.

The truck driver struggled with conflicting emotions at the scene. He was relieved that he was unhurt but distraught because of the loss of life.

“I feel alright, don’t want to go to any doctor or anything, but life [has been] lost [so] mi feel a way, still. Is not my fault still but life a life still. But a so it go; one of those days,” he said.

“I tried everything to save them but I couldn’t save them; everything I tried, man. Mi all come off the road; yu nuh si how far I come off the road? I couldn’t save them.”

He said in order to exit he had to climb through the top of the truck as the building in which it was jammed made it impossible for the doors to open.

“Just a little part that I saw where I could come through so I just fight and come through. Me all scrape up and something but I have to give God thanks; I am here,” he said.