Linden records road deaths but no perpetrators

Apr 01, 2012 News

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Many of the road accidents in Linden, occur on the Winifred Gaskin Highway (One Mile main road) in Wismar. Some have been fatal.
Adding to families’ bereavement are what they consider the ‘muddled’ court cases from which the accused walk free, or with a sentence many consider to be ‘a mere slap on the wrist. In some cases the perpetrators are not even charged, some grieving relatives have claimed.
Recently the man who was eventually charged with causing the death of Joan Earle on August 18, 2010, walked free after the case was dismissed. The entire Earle family considers that decision a travesty of justice, and totally unfair.
Joan Earle had suffered massive head and other injuries that rendered her comatose for four months. She eventually succumbed on December 1, 2010. The accident that caused her eventual death occurred on the Winifred Gaskin Highway after a car struck her from behind and hurled her into another woman who was walking towards her.
The two were flung into a nearby gutter. Fortunately the other woman who was two months pregnant at the time, escaped with minor injuries, as Joan took the full impact of the car.
“Joan saved me and me baby life, because if it wasn’t for her, I woulda get the full impact of that car and so she died as a result,” the woman related during a recent interview.
The two were taken to the hospital after the accident, where Joan spent the night before being transferred to Georgetown the following day. Relatives related how they had to take turns squeezing a ball to ‘give her air ‘throughout the night to keep her alive.
At the time of her death Joan Earle was the sole breadwinner, and only daughter for her 70-year-old mother, Edna Earle.
Fifty-seven-year-old Wilton Craig, of One Mile Extension was also killed on the Winifred Gaskin Highway. His accident occurred on the morning of July 26, 2009. Craig was on his way to work on his bicycle. He was at the time employed by Bosai Minerals as a security Officer.
The man responsible for Wilton Craig’s death today walks the road a free man. He was found not guilty of all charges by the presiding magistrate at the Christianburg Magistrate’s Court. And according to Craig’s wife, Wenola, a few months after her husband was killed, the man responsible was back on the road driving, after representation was made on his behalf by his lawyer, who told the court that he was the breadwinner for his family.
She said she later called the prosecutor and told him of her disappointment with the decision and was told that the policeman who was dealing with the case was out of the country. The man said that he was sorry but nothing could be done.
Craig said that when the verdict of not guilty was read in court she jumped up and shouted “Oh God!” but then her son urged her to sit down. “I walked out and reached him outside and told him, you killed my husband and now you walking free!”
She related that the man was later seen drinking that day, and was admonished by a friend of the family.
According to her, the magistrate, the prosecutor and police had failed to present their case.
“This thing was getting me mad, because everybody knew this driver was drunk when he hit my husband. He himself admitted to us that he was under the influence- yet he was freed of all charges. Where is the justice? I’m left without a husband, my children without a father. I had to find a job to care for my children. I had never worked in my life, but now I have to work, I don’t have a choice.
“Sometimes I’m sitting in a daze. I get terrible flashbacks, because he was in perfect health and somebody sent him to his grave early– Since I know my husband over 30 years I never see him sick one day. And I’m fearful for my daughter, Tonya, because she is still taking it on– she still sleeps with her father’s picture under her pillow.”
Wenola Craig said that she never told her mother-in-law, who has a heart problem, of the outcome of the court case, because she fears it would kill her.
On June 23, 2011, the lives of Aquilah Samuels, a four-year-old nursery school child of the One Mile Nursery and her cousin, 12-year-old Shaka Anthony, a student of the Mackenzie High School were also snuffed out on the Winifred Gaskin Highway.
The cousins were the children of two sisters, Affi Hinckson and Keisha Anderson of One Mile.
On the fateful day, the cousins were on their way home on a bicycle when they were reportedly hit by a car, and subsequently run over by a truck owned by Bosai Minerals. The children were mere inches away from the pedestrian crossing.
Acquila’s head was crushed by a rear wheel of the truck and she died on the spot. Her cousin Shaka succumbed to multiple injuries, a few hours later at the Linden Hospital Complex, where he was rushed.
No one was ever charged with the children’s death, family members complain. They are convinced that was because of the ‘connections’ of the drivers involved.
Keisha Anderson, the mother of Aquilah Samuels, said during a recent interview, “I can’t sleep in me bed alone, because I used to sleep with my daughter; she was my baby- my only child. I can’t even stand the room.
“Other people are getting on with their lives, but we will never get over what happened to our children. And then we never got any justice; their deaths just gone down like that, with nobody taking responsibility.”
Affi said that after the accident, Bosai Minerals gave them $50,000 each, and contributed towards the wake, and told them that they were not really responsible.
But the taxi and truck drivers never even called or in any way showed any remorse she added.
Affi, Shaka’s mother, is even now still distraught. “I don’t know what to say.”
But other relatives are adamant that the person or persons responsible for the death of these children must be brought to justice.
“We got to have justice,” they reiterated.

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