A day of mourning at White Marl Primary
STUDENTS and teachers of the White Marl Primary School in St Catherine were yesterday in mourning following the death of seven-year-old Ann-Marie Mayne, who was mowed down by a motorcar while on her way to school.
Ann-Marie, who left her home at nearby Little Lane minutes before, met her death as she tried to cross a section of the Mandela Highway, less than 100 metres from the Red Cross building.
Corporal Lloyd Wellington of the Central Village Police Station told the Observer that the little girl was hit by a Toyota Corolla motorcar shortly before 8:00 am when she ran across the road to be with friends waiting on the other side.
“According to the information gathered, she was accompanied by three students who had already crossed the road and was waiting on her on the other side,” the police corporal said.
“She ran across the road and into the vehicle which was travelling in a westerly direction toward Spanish Town,” said Wellington.
He said the little girl was taken to the Spanish Town Hospital, where she died from injuries to the head.
Kemar Bennett, 24, the driver of the motorcar, was being questioned by the police until late yesterday afternoon.
At Ann-Marie’s school yesterday students made condolence cards in memory of their fellow classmate.
A grief stricken, Janet Wright, Ann-Marie’s teacher, said that explaining what happened to other students was, for her, the hardest part.
“It’s really hard. Some of the students even asked if they could go visit her,” a teary-eyed Wright told the Observer. “It is even harder on the students who understand,” she added.
She said Ann-Marie was a promising student who had only learned to spell her name correctly on Monday and had promised to make further improvements in the coming weeks.
Her empty desk, which sat directly in front of the teacher’s table stood as a constant reminder of the budding student who had become the latest road fatality, and one of more than 20 children to be killed on the roads this year.