An SEL employee was killed on the job in an ugly chain reaction crash in Belize City on Friday afternoon and police say an out of control driver is to blame. The accident claimed the life of 36-year-old Samuel Yarde Jr., an SEL employee who was working in a drain near the corner of Amara Avenue and Dean Street just before 3 pm on Friday. Witnesses tell police that 25 year old Fiona Gillett was coming off Dean Street in a while Corolla and ran the stop sign. She then slammed into 30-year-old Martin Banner who was driving his white pickup on Amara towards King Street.
The impact was major and it sent Banner's pickup spinning which is when it hit a Ford Aerostar van that was parked on the street side. Samuel Yarde Jr. was hit somewhere in the chain reaction crash and he was thrown into a nearby drain. He was taken to the KHMH complaining of stomach injuries and died around 8 on Friday night. For his co-worker Marjorie, who just happened to be in the area on Friday, and who witnessed the accident, she says the sight was simply unbelievable.
Marjorie, Co-worker and Witness
"I feel like it happened, you see like when you and your brother and sister hang out, he was just like that to me. I feel like he was my brother check and he feels like somebody close to me so it hurt. I know him because anytime he went to work or came home he always told me good evening or good morning or said hello to me. So when I saw they hit my friend I felt bad."
Keith Swift,
Any concern now about working out here on the street?
Marjorie,
"Yes because out here some people like to drink and drive and then they don't know who they hit and supposed they hit my child instead of me, if it is my child I don't know what I would do."
Yarde will be buried later this week. Meanwhile police have charged the driver of the white Toyota Corolla Fiona Gillett with failure to conform with a traffic sign, manslaughter by negligence, driving without due care an attention and causing death by careless conduct.
