2 COPS DIE IN CRASH
Two district constables were killed while two other police officers were among four other persons critically injured in a traffic accident on Hagley Park Road in Kingston early yesterday.
Police named the dead district constables as Tamika Johnson, 23 and Hugh Farquharson, 26, both of whom worked at the Spanish Town Police Station.
The injured victims of the accident include Dujon Rose, 20 and Walter Skeen, 24, both constables, as well as Jermaine Paige, 21, a tour guide of Nugent Street, Spanish Town, and Anthony Henry, 22, a photographer of Stony Hill, St Andrew.
The four cops, as well as Paige, were travelling in the same car, a Hyundai, apparently heading back to St Catherine, after a night out, when it collided with a Toyota Corolla, in which Henry was a passenger, near Stratford Avenue, which runs adjacent to Hagley Park Road.
The accident happened shortly before 5:00 am.
Johnson died on the spot. Farquharson was pronounced dead at hospital. While Rose, Skeen, Paige and Henry were admitted in serious condition, the driver of the Toyota, whose name was not disclosed, was treated and released.
Yesterday, officers at the Spanish Town Police Station were apparently deeply disturbed by the death and injuries to colleagues with whom they had worked less than 24 hours later.
In fact, the group had stopped at the station before heading for Kingston.
“I sat with them right here last night running jokes before they began their journey to Kingston, only to get the sad news this morning,” said Sergeant Tyrone Jackson.
He pointed to chairs in the station’s reception area where he and his colleagues had sat the night before.
It was apparently a trip that Johnson, at first, did not intend to take.
Johnson, who worked at the Spanish Town station for four years before joining the police as a DC a year ago, had Saturday night told her mother, Paulette Lawrence, that her friends had invited her out but she was unlikely to go because she was tired.
“I said to her, ‘Don’t go, Baby’, and her last words were, ‘Okay, mother’,” Lawrence said.
That was the last time Lawrence saw ‘Baby’ alive. ‘Baby’ is Lawrence’s pet name for the second of her two daughters.
“When my friend Charmaine called and told me about the accident, I couldn’t believe it,” Lawrence said. “I just drag on a suit of clothes, took some medicine and head straight to the police station and was sent to Madden’s Funeral Home in Kingston where my daughter’s body was.”
Lawrence, who is asthmatic, also suffers from hypertension.
National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips said yesterday that he was saddened by the accident and extended condolences to the victims’ families, friends and colleagues.
Yesterday, one passer-by who claimed to have arrived at the scene only seconds after the accident, said it was Farquharson who was behind the wheels of the Hyundai, which, he argued, ended on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.
“When I arrived here I saw the driver of the Toyota Corolla hop out of his car and headed towards the crushed Hyundai trying to help them out,” said the passer-by who declined to give his name. “It was clear that the lady was dead and several passers-by tried to help the other occupants out but they were pinned down.”
He said a team from the Fire Brigade, too, could not get the injured men out of the crushed car.
“It was not until two wreckers were called and they both hooked the vehicle and dragged it either way to pull it apart that they got the men out,” he added.
The witness said the driver of the Toyota Corolla told him that he had stopped at the intersection of Stratford Avenue to avoid a collision with the Hyundai, which was travelling full speed down Hagley Park Road.
“The driver said it was obvious that the DC lost control of the vehicle because it was criss-crossing over both lanes,” the man said.
Yesterday, the crumpled Hyundai was at the Half-Way-Tree Police Station, whose officers are investigating the accident.