Tonight there is more information about yesterday's quadruple traffic fatality on the Western Highway. As we reported, three students from a university in Greece were killed along with their taxi driver who crashed into a Westline bus at mile 60 near the Busman Arnold Bridge.
The students are 24 year old American Molly Hude, 24 year old Angela Bugeja who is from the European island of Malta, and 25 year old Ioanna Thomopoulou, who is from Greece. Police say that the cab driver 64 year old Eliseo Chan – who was taking them to the airport - lost control of the vehicle, and collided into the bus. Chen, Bugeja and Thomopaulou all died on impact, and police responded shortly after, where they extracted Hude and transported her to Western Regional Hospital. Her injuries were too severe, and she died about an hour later while undergoing treatment.
The young women had been in Belize working at Cahal Pech with the Institute of Archaeology since June fourth. Hude, who had been to Belize twice before asked Director of the Institute of Archeology Dr. Jaime Awe if she could bring along two friends from her school in Greece.
Awe was their professor and mentor and he explained to us that this has been a most trying time for him personally and professionally, because he was working closely with them at the Cahal Pech Site in Cayo:
Dr. Jaime Awe - Director of Belize Institute of Archeology
"The last two days have been probably two of the most difficult days in my life, it's been both personally, professionally, emotionally draining. I have been teaching students at Cahal Pech; in fact, I have a project called the Belize valley archeological reconnaissance project and I have been teaching students all over the world, you name the country, they have been here. I teach them about archeology and some of them begin with me as under graduates, several of the PHD's that do research in Belize came as my students and whenever you have this kind of intimate, close daily relationship with these students, you know, you are out in the field, it rains, you get wet with them, the sun beats on you, you sweat, you both get dirty and sweaty doing this work, you both get excited when you get make those discoveries.
This is very intimate, intensive type of relationship that develops and you know one of them had been working with me for several years, had actually gone to study heritage management in Greece and after about two years she wrote me and said 'guess what, could I come back and work with you again and bring two of my friends, one from Malta, one from Greece to do research on heritage management, how is it that you guys manage Cahal Pech'. And the research that they were doing was to see what gaps we had, how we could improve what we do at Cahal Pech. Just on Sunday, I was with them at Xunantunich so that they could get another view of a different site and so to get the message on Tuesday just before noon, as I was here hosting the symposium, it's a real hard thing to swallow. It's something you want to wake up the next day and hope that it was a bad dream but their spirit will live on, we will continue to train the next generation of archeologists and anthropologists that work in Belize. We are already planning to maybe commemorate the conservation of one of the buildings at the site in their name, in their memory. These students had completed their one month research at Cahal Pech and had actually wrapped up the data collection, they had gotten to cab to take them to the airport because they were supposed to fly out around noon, I think on American Airlines. They were heading back to Philladelphia which is the home of one the American student so, like I said, just sad moment"
The families of the international students are expected to travel to Belize to retrieve their bodies. According to Dr. Awe, they were brilliant students who had intentions of returning to Belize next year to continue their work.
Awe says the programme with the Belize Valley Archeology Project has is in its 25th year and this is the first time that there's been an accident.
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