A member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force's Accident Investigation and Reconstruction Unit isat the scene of the crash, on the Lilliput main road in St James on Monday, which claimed the life of12-year-old Jeff Fitzgerald. (Photos: Horace Hines)
Deadly dash
12-year-old boy dies after being hit by car while crossing Lilliput main road
LILLIPUT, St James — Howard Fitzgerald was inconsolable on Monday.
He had lost his 12-year-old son Jeff Anthony Fitzgerald in the very manner he had tried to prevent.
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The seventh-grade student at Spot Valley High School in St James, who was in the company of his older brother, was hit by a motor car after he dashed across the usually busy Lilliput road to catch a taxi on his way to school. He was rushed to Falmouth Public General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“He didn’t want the child to cross the road. He told the child, ‘Jeff, do not cross the road. You don’t need to cross the road.’ Even when he is going to come back to pick him up [after school], he parks on the other side, walk over and gets him over. He did his best to protect the child,” Paul Orio, pastor at Mission Apostolic Outreach Ministry in Lilliput, told the Jamaica Observer.
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“He is the breadwinner. He has three more children to care for,” the clergyman shared as he sought to comfort bereaved members of Fitzgerald’s family at the hospital.
The boy’s aunt, Simone Ferguson, gave a similar account of the instructions Howard Fitzgerald issued to his son.
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“He goes to Spot Valley so the father told him to stay on his side [of the road] because he don’t need to go over the other side. Even in the evenings he said he told him to stay on this side where he is on and him [will] come pick him up,” Ferguson said, adding that she was about to leave home for work when she got the call about the tragedy.
Ferguson and Pastor Orio told the Observer that the father broke down at the hospital and had to get medical treatment.
“It is very hard. Sometimes it seems him a tek it like him nah go make it. Him just a squeeze up himself. Mi don’t know… it don’t look good. It don’t look good at all,” Ferguson said, adding that Jeff’s three siblings are also devastated.
“They are not taking it good, especially the bigger brother that was there with him. The brother said him never tell him to go across the road; him don’t know why him cross the road,” she said.
“All mi parents not taking it good because we just bury mi 19-year-old niece in November. It’s not easy on the family. It nuh easy at all,” she cried.
Pastor Orio noted that the father, who was a deacon in the church, had stopped attending but had returned just two weeks ago. In fact, Fitzgerald and his children were in church on Sunday this week.
“They grow up in the church. Jeff was very quiet, a nice young man. We just have to pray for the family, especially for the father. He is taking it very hard. The father is a very caring father, a father who cares for his family, so that’s why it is so hurtful to him,” the clergyman said.
Meanwhile, residents who gathered near the scene of Monday morning’s fatal accident appealed for the authorities to erect a stop light in the vicinity of the Bamboo Lawn intersection.
“Over the years a lot of people dead yah so. We need a stop light to end all the accidents that a happen here. Several pickney from off the hill dead right yah so. We need a stop light and the Government needs to look through this and install a stop light,” said Vinroy Bonney, who has lived in Lilliput for the past 27 years.
Calvin Robinson, a resident of the community for 33 years and who has been operating a taxi for more than 20 years, cited the need for a stop light not only at the Bamboo Lawn intersection but at the Bob Man Hill section of the community as well.
“We need another stop light down by the centre; a lot of accident happens there because we don’t have no stop light. You can be turning and man a overtake same time. A lot of people mi see dead down there and we need a stop light down there,” Robinson said.
Paul Orio, pastor at MissionApostolic Outreach Ministry inLilliput, recalls that the fatherof 12-year-old Jeff Fitzgeraldalways instructed the boy not tocross the road.
Simone Ferguson (centre), the aunt of 12-year-old Jeff Fitzgerald, is being consoled by family members at Falmouth Public General Hospital on Monday. The boy died after being hit by a car as he tried to cross the Lilliput main road on his way to school.
