Pedestrian killed in Half-way-tree

COMMUTERS were left traumatised yesterday after a pedestrian was killed in vicinity of North Odeon Avenue and Eastwood Park Road in Half-way-tree, St Andrew.

The constabulary’s Corporate Communication Unit (CCU) reported that approximately 9:30 am the 50-year-old pedestrian, Peter Henry, of Waltham Park Road, was attempting to cross the road when he was hit by the mirror of a passing motor vehicle. According to the CCU, Henry fell to the ground and was subsequently run. He was taken to the hospital where he died. An alleged eyewitness told the Jamaica Observer that the truck was travelling in the middle lane when it slowed down to avoid hitting the man, whom he said had walked in the road in front of the truck. He said that it was a Coaster bus that was travelling in the right lane which hit the man, causing him to fall in the path of the truck. The bus driver, who was obviously shaken up by the tragedy, told the Observer that he was heading towards Constant Spring in the right lane when the man ran from the left side of the road into the bus. “Mi traumatise; mi a wonder if a salt mi salt. Mi no know what is the procedure with him now; mi no know where him gone, what they said happen to him. I’m just here giving my statement and a watch what the police is doing. Mi kind a shake up, but a just one a dem ting deh, a so it go,” the driver who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The truck driver, Christopher Scarlet said, “There was a metally ill man coming from the left side of the road, I was in the middle lane, and by the time I brake up to avoid hitting him, the motorist in the right lane (a bus) hit him already, sending him under the truck. I realise what happened, so I stopped same time, but the shirt that he was wearing got tangled up under the truck, but the truck never ran over him or anything so he was not crushed by the truck. [It was] because of the hit from the bus and he was under there for a while. We jacked up the truck and took him out and the police rush with him to hospital,“said the truck driver.