7 News Belize

Traffic Accident Kills Five, Wipes Out An Entire Family
posted (July 12, 2010)
On Saturday morning after 7:00 there was a massive collision at mile 29 on the western highway. It is among the worst traffic accidents we've ever seen because an entire family unit was killed in a few seconds of terrible impact. 7news was on the scene and here's the story.

Jules Vasquez, Reporting Looking at this mangled, flattened wreckage of the Honda Prelude, you can understand why no one survived. All 5 passengers, two adults, Driver 41 year old Jose Nunez and passenger 23 year old Irania Rubio along with her three children, Janelle Neal, aged 7, Albert Neal, Jr. aged 6 and Jorge Alpuche Jr. 5 months old all died on impact:

Iris Patricia Rubio, Sister/Aunt of Deceased
"She was single with the three kids. Her boyfriend came to see her from the US two weeks ago."

Jules Vasquez
"What are the ages of the children?"

Iris Patricia Rubio
"6, 7 and 5 months."

Jose Sanchez, Reporter
"So she recently gave birth. Where were they heading?"

Iris Patricia Rubio
"The airport."

Jose Sanchez
"Where were they heading to?"

Iris Patricia Rubio
"She was going to drop her boyfriend at the airport because he was suppose to be leaving today from Belize to the US."

The car was heading to the airport and this tow head loaded with 25 tonnes of cement was headed for Cayo. The driver 43 year old Miguel Chi who has been hauling cement for 9 years says the Prelude veered into his lane:

ASP Bart Jones, Police Department
"The driver of the truck Miguel Chi from Orange Walk District was travelling with 4 other persons in the tow-head when reaching the area he saw a green car which seem to have swerved into his lane on the highway."

Miguel Chi, Driver
"I blow my horn like 3 times to the man when I see like he is coming fast in my lane. I swerve off the road. It happens so quickly. He was coming on his right lane then suddenly he turn like maybe he or she was sleeping, I don't know who was driving."

Gilbert Guerra, Truck Passenger
"My father-in-law was trying to avoid the accident because the car was coming straight at us, he swerve the truck so that the car could go the other side, that when the car crash into the my side, the passenger side."

Guerra who sat in the passenger seat said he felt when the car crashed to the part of the truck beneath him, that's right where this gas tank was perched. It ripped off in the terrible impact as did this entire spring from the truck's suspension. It looks as if one whole side of the car was raked off underneath the huge truck.

The cement truck ended up in the bushes in a swampy area on the roadside. When Guerra and Chi managed to get out of the 18 wheeler without any serious injury, they saw a terrible sight on the roadside:

Miguel Chi
"I see them right there laying down, from far you can see that they are already dead, you can't do anything. I feel very bad, I feel kind of dizzy and just like I said I can't do anything."

Jules Vasquez
"When you came out here on the road what did you see?"

Gilbert Guerra
"I don't know what to tell you because I see the lady have no head; the baby did not have his arm. The bodies was scattered all over road. I don't know how to tell you. We can't do anything. [Jules Vasquez, "Human parts."] Just human parts, the baby guts were all over. we try to help, but we can't help anybody like that."

The scene was a disaster police spent hours after the road was cleared searching for body parts - as the passengers were literally torn apart. For the family of the 5 dead, the devastation is complete:

Iris Patricia Rubio
"All of them is dead. Nobody is alive. How do you think I feel? One year ago I lost my husband the same way, this is too much."

Carolina Gonzalez, Sister of Deceased
"Really hurt badly because it's too much and when going to her house and seeing her things and the kids are not there again, I can't explain how that feel. It's really painful because those kids was her life and I remember the last time when I came to see her in the hospital when she have her baby and we went together home and she told me, 'The only thing I ask God that the day I decide to die, if I could take all of my kids with me.' And it happens, it did happen. The family is trying to be strong to continue. But I don't know tomorrow how it will be."

Father of two of the children, Albert Neal Sr. was supposed to meet them in the city after they went to the airport. He was supposed to buy a bicycle for each of his children.

Albert Neal Sr.
"My two kids at the same time, then with the mother and the newborn. Even though the newborn is not mine but they are so honest to this world, they don't have any fault of what adults go through. I just feel very empty at the moment but I got to face the facts, that is what I have to face. I just open the morgue again to see my little girl and my little boy and it's so sad that that's the way I got to see them but that's the good Lord's job, he knows what he does. And whatever the good Lord does, he does for a reason."

Neal who does construction for a living has examined the wreckage and concluded that his family could not have survived.

Albert Neal Sr.
"There's no way they could have survived, under no circumstances. It had to be a miracle for them to survive that. Because that car went under that truck and according to what I see and I have experience in mechanic, that car went under the truck head on. I believe that truck rode over the car."

The family of Irania Rubio who was decapitated was left with a very difficult duty to their sister:

Carolina Gonzalez
"We went to where the accident happen, we see the car, we pick up some pieces of meat and pieces of the head and the pieces of the jaw."

The toll weighs heavily on Chi for whom this is his first accident:

Jose Sanchez, Reporter
"Did you have a chance to speak to the family of the victims that are out here?"

Miguel Chi
"No boss I don't feel like because I don't know what to say. Sorry about that."

There was no shortage of sorrow to go around on this morning as the highway had to be closed for almost two hours and traffic queued up for miles while the fire department tried to clean up the diesel and oil from the road.

The bitter coincidence is that one of the most outstanding road safety signs is perched like a beacon less than a mile away. And it's there because about a mile away at mile 28 in January of 2003, 6 died and 9 were injured in a massive collision and just like Saturday's one that happened on a straight stretch of road, except at the time the road was wet.

As was noted in the story, 6 died in the 2003 accident and 5 died in Saturday morning's collision, but by Saturday evening, that 5 would turn into 6 in a bizarre and tragic twist.

It happened at around 3:30 in the afternoon when the Ministry Of Works was on the scene at mile 29 trying to haul the cement truck out of the bushes. 39 year old equipment operator Sherman Williams was driving an excavator off a lo-boy that had brought the machine to the area. But unexpectedly, the excavator started to slip off the lo-boy. Williams jumped from the operator's seat and fell to the ground. The roof of the falling excavator landed directly on the top part of his head crushing his skull. He died instantly.

Williams who is from Santa Elena was the father of eleven and a long time employee of the Ministry Of Works. He was a veteran machine operator.

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