The lives of three persons from Belize City were cut short yesterday morning, “in the blink of an eye,” as the vehicle in which they were travelling crashed at high speed into the rear of a parked truck on the Northern Highway around Mile 48 in the village of Carmelita, located two miles outside Orange Walk Town.
The three persons, two men and a woman, were heading toward Orange Walk Town in a green, 1992 Jeep Comanche pickup truck, which was being driven by Atilio E. Ulloa, 33, of #32 Simon Lamb Street, Belize City. Seated between the two men was Cecilia Melgar, 21, while Mark Anthony Pacheco, 24, of Cleghorn Street, Belize City, was seated near the door.
Ulloa’s companions were accompanying him to Orange Walk Town, where he was going to work on painting some signs, according to his sister Nancy whose Jeep he had borrowed for the trip.
Something happened to the front tire on the passenger side of the Jeep Comanche. Apparently, the tire was a recap and its top layer stripped off on the hot asphalt surface, causing the wheel to explode. This particular Jeep Comanche has a standard transmission, and registered eighty-five miles per hour as its maximum speed on the speedometer.
An eyewitness, however, had opined to the media that the vehicle was going in excess of ninety miles per hour.
Sharon Reynolds, a teacher who is attending the University of Belize in Belize City, was on the left side of the road waiting to catch a bus to the old capital.
This morning Reynolds told Amandala that she observed a blue cargo truck passing by. There was a man and his girlfriend who were waiting by the bus stop to catch a bus to Orange Walk. When the man who was trying to get a ride to Orange Walk waved the truck, the driver pushed his head out the window and told him that he was not going to Orange Walk, and the truck pulled up a short distance from where I was standing. The driver got out. He had a gallon bottle in his hand; he headed toward his house, which is across the road from where he had parked the truck.
It was around 11:00 a.m. when the Jeep Comanche came barreling down the highway in Carmelita.
Reynolds told the newspaper that she heard a loud bang, sounding like a vehicle blowout. And she observed the Jeep coming under high speed.
“I saw the Jeep swerve onto the shoulder of the road. Immediately I could foresee what was going to happen. I said, Lord give this man strength or courage so that he could swerve out, because he was going directly into the back of the truck. After the impact, I shouted to the guy at the bus stop to let us go and see what we could do to help the people in the Jeep. I just threw down my school bag and started to run.
“When I got there I saw a person’s head in the pan of the pickup. The body was still, still. Presence of mind took over, and I called 911. Meanwhile the bus that I was waiting on came and went. I called my sister, who is a nurse, and told her that there was a terrible accident, to come out and see if she can help.
“When we began to look more inside the pickup, we realized that it was three persons in the pickup. A head was on the chest of the driver, whose head was completely severed and in the pan of the pickup. His head was like someone had taken a razor blade and cut off all the hair and then took a machete and cut it off completely. It was gruesome.
“The head that was on the driver’s chest was that of a Spanish person with long hair. Her face was in a terrible condition. The guy that was sitting on the passenger side was the only one who saw what was going to happen. It’s like he ducked down, the way his body was. He was leaning on the young lady.
“The police took a long time to come. When the ambulance came, they did not have any nurse, they did not have a doctor, they did not have any gloves. So it’s good that my sister was out there.
“The fire engine came and washed away the blood from the shoulder of the road. I stayed there until everything was done. The owner of the truck sent for a tractor to pull it away.”
Another eyewitness, Kira Arnold, who lives across the road from where the accident occurred, told Amandala that she was upstairs her house, when “I saw this vehicle (pointing toward the mangled metals) coming under speed. It had a blowout and it flew into the truck. When I came across here, all the persons in the vehicle were already dead. The driver’s head was cut off and all three of them inside the vehicle were mashed up.”
Marsha Gabourel lives down the road and heard the loud bang. “When I got here, I saw that the driver’s head was gone. The young lady’s head was gone. The other young man was alive for only a few minutes.”
Francis Gerald Pacheco, the father of Mark Anthony Pacheco, told Amandala that he saw his son leaving yesterday morning with a kit bag. “I thought that he was going to work at caye, but when my other son called me and told me after 11:00, Pa, you know Markie dead. I could not believe.”
Francis said that after he learned of his son’s death, he went to sleep and dreamt that his son came to him and told him that everything was okay.
Mark Pacheco will be laid to rest after funeral services at Holy Redeemer Cathedral on Saturday. His body will lie in state at 1:00 p.m. before a funeral Mass at 2:00 p.m.
Atilio Ulloa’s sister, Nancy, told Amandala that his family wanted to have him “churched” at St. Joseph’s, but Father Kurt of St. Joseph’s refused, telling them that they had been living across from the church for the last thirteen years since he has been preaching at the church, and they have not come to his church.