Two fatalities in Brac car crash

| 16/11/2015 | 15 Comments

Cayman News Service(CNS) UPDATED Monday 12:16pm: Two men are dead and one seriously injured following a car crash on Cayman Brac yesterday evening. According to the RCIPS, the single-vehicle accident happened at around 5.00pm on Sunday 15 November, when a minivan ran off the road on South Side Road East. Two men, a 50-year-old resident and a 54-year-old visitor, both US citizens, were killed in the accident.  

The police initially reported that one man had died as a result of injuries sustained in the accident and another man had been taken to Faith Hospital on Cayman Brac. However, the RCIPS later reported that while on the scene investigating the accident, police officers received information that a third man had been seen in the car as well earlier in the day. The officers then made further checks of the area while the Fire Service assisted with the lifting of the vehicle, a Honda Odyssey Minivan, which was overturned. At around 8:45pm the body of the 54-year-old man was discovered underneath the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said the vehicle was travelling east when it lost control and overturned. The Air Operations Unit transported accident investigators from Grand Cayman to Cayman Brac this morning to carry out a full investigation.

The local US consulate has been informed regarding the death of the US visitor, police said.

The 48-year-old man who survived the accident, a resident of Cayman Brac and US citizen, was initially taken to the Brac hospital. Police said he was flown to Grand Cayman yesterday and underwent surgery at George Town Hospital. He was reported to be conscious after surgery and recuperating.

The two fatalities yesterday brings the total number of road deaths in the Cayman Islands this year to twelve, four of them on Cayman Brac, which has a population of approximately 2,000.

Jose Abel Zelaya (49) died on 2 January after he lost control of his car and ran off the road at the intersection of Ashton Reid Drive and Songbird Drive, Cayman Brac, and collided with a wooden fence post before the vehicle erupted in flames. The accident was the first road fatality in the Cayman Islands in 2015.

Raoul Muhammad Scott (19) was killed in a two-vehicle crash along Dennis Foster Road, Stake Bay, Cayman Brac, on 9 January. Jefferson Laurendo (22) has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving in connection with the incident. According to a police report at the time, Scott was driving a red Honda Civic travelling east when the crash happened near to the junction of Ocean Villa Road. Laurendo was in a white Honda Civic travelling in the same direction as Scott when the cars crashed. Scott died shortly after arriving at the Faith Hospital.

In mid-October, following the tenth fatality of the year, the RCIPS said it was planning a major road safety campaign, which was to begin at the end of that month, but there have been no updates on the campaign since.

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Comments (15)

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  1. Da Bracker says:

    Pure slackness a go on in nah dis ya police force Remember what Baines said every officer is a traffic officer?????? obviously not!! I could grasp if maybe it had been some distance off the road in bush but not on the side of road Come on mann this is disgraceful. The RCIPS need a serious shake up at the very top they simply getting worse and we keep giving them more and more money for what???

  2. Anonymous says:

    The Ministry has the Fire Service in a mess, it has more ACTING than Hollywood and the only criteria needed to qualify is to be in the clan of who can drag the most news the top dogs XXXXXX. Resulting in UNQUALIFIED OFFICERS acting in positions, you have not seen anything yet, let us hope we don’t have a mass casualty . ERIC BUSH or DG you need to fix this NOW before there is more deaths because I can tell you the law suits are coming.

  3. Anonymous says:

    So if the police were not notified would the other victim have been left under the car until the next day ? that is poor emergency service all around ,these people need training real bad

  4. Anonymous says:

    How did the police miss the third passenger and could he have been alive right after the accident?.

    • Anonymous says:

      If you had seen how the vehicle was positioned I doubt you would say that. It would have been nearly impossible to relies someone was pinned underneath the van without moving it. In addition, even if the man was still alive after the accident (which is doubtful since he was crushed by a minivan), he probably wouldn’t have been when the ambulance arrived at the scene. It takes time to get from the hospital to South Side since it is an ambulance, not a teleportation device.

  5. Anonymous says:

    Ambulance crews almost always respond to vehicle crashes not knowing what they’ll find. And if they are first on the scene, they are expected to search thoroughly for victims. In general, when EMS is dispatched to a car accident there is an expectation that the crew do a thorough search for injured patients both inside, outside and underneath the vehicle.
    The Ministry of Health should now complete a peer review system that examine the incident and take action.
    Actions could include:
    – Absolution
    – Education or protocol change
    – Trending
    – Written warning
    – Written reprimand
    – Corrective action plan
    – Probation
    – Suspension
    – Recommended revocation of license
    – EMS chief and crews suspension from duty pending the outcome of the investigation

    Any results of this investigation should be released to the public.

  6. Anonymous says:

    One fatality per month

  7. Anonymous says:

    4 fatal crashes in one year, three involving single car incidents.

    There is clearly a disconnect on Cayman Brac between drink driving and law enforcement.

    • Baraud says:

      Remember this, 3 of the 4 were foreigners and the other never drank in life so mind how you make Cayman Brackers sound bad!!

      • Anonymous says:

        Anonymous didn’t say Brackers. Anonymous said Cayman Brac as in the people that live in Cayman Brac.

    • Anonymous says:

      Firstly, it’s ‘drunk driving’ not ‘drink driving’. Secondly, there were four fatality’s but only three crashes, two being single car. Thirdly, it is my understanding that the owner if the bar actually drove the men who crashed on Sunday home because he realized they were to drunk to drive, and then they went back out after he left. They lived on the South Side so most likely they hadn’t been back on the road for very long. Unless you expect the police to have a car positioned every ten feet looking for drunk drivers, this is in no way the fault of law enforcement.

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