Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
Gleaner Vendor Shirley Gayle is overcome with emotion after viewing the lifeless body of fellow newspaper vendor Dezreen Irvin, who was one of four people hit by a garbage truck while selling newspapers on the sidewalk adjacent to the St Andrew Parish Church on Hagley Park Road, Half-Way Tree recently.

The flashbacks of blood, screams and tyre screeches rushing through his mind caused him to break down before he could even tell his tale to The Gleaner/Power 106 News Centre.

"Mi cyan tell you how mi feel. Mi cyan even barely talk to you now because mi inside just a tremble. Me lips dem, from me ankle a come right up, just a tremble. Me dead just fi know what happen to me," a still very obviously shocked Alston Williams told the news centre late Friday, his voice trembling as he spoke.

Williams is the driver of the garbage truck that killed two women and injured two others in Half-Way Tree two Fridays ago. One of the women, 49-year-old newspaper vendor Dezreen Irvin was five months pregnant. She died on the spot. The other woman, 49-year-old Allison Burke, died in hospital last week following injuries she sustained during the crash.

First day on job

It was Williams' first day on the job when it happened, but having been a licensed driver since 1979, he did not expect this to happen to him.

It was all an accident, he explains. The truck's brakes failed as he came up Hagley Park Road from Six Miles to the intersection that joins Hagley Park Road, Maxfield Avenue and Eastwood Park Road.

"When mi reach at the stop light now, and wen mi a try to stop, mi get nothing from the brake. A van was in front of mi, some children was in front of mi. And when mi look, mi seh: 'Lawd Gad! Di whole of di pickney dem a squeeze up in front of the van and go dead'," Williams recounts. "Mi swerve the truck to the left now, to put it into the wall on the left-hand side so that it would a stop. When mi ketch a stop, mi seh: 'Jesus Christ! Some woman over there and the woman dem a go dead!" a distraught Williams relates.

"When mi come out of the truck and look on the woman, mi seh: 'Jesus Christ!' Mi just turn down the road and mi just gone; mi no look back, mi just gone. Is actually two days mi nuh sleep," he continued. "Mi no tell nobody nutten. Mi belly a tremble, di whole a me limbs dem - it come like mi dead," he added.

He was afraid to go the police:

"They were going to kill mi," he thought, "In the meantime, me think seh mi soul gone a hell cause mi kill somebody. Mi a think 'bout everything what a go happen to mi: Dem not going to believe what mi a go say; dem a go send mi go a prison and I can't take it, sir!" he told The Gleaner/Power 106.

"Mi want to go [to the police]. Mi a look, but mi no have no money to employ no lawyer. Mi no have nothing at all," he adds. He then jumped on a bus and left the Corporate Area to stay with relatives.

He hasn't eaten much since the ordeal. In fact, all he has had to eat since then, he says, are a few tomatoes with salt and lots of fluid, because he hasn't had an appetite.

"Mi looking at it (the situation) and me can't live with it and mi think mi a go kill meself. All kind of things me a think about because mi can't go a prison go dead here now. Mi no kill nobody, mi never kill nobody yet."

He broke down in tears again.