BELIZE CITY, Wed. Nov. 24, 2021 — On Monday evening, a truck driver’s ill-timed attempt to overtake another vehicle on the George Price Highway ultimately led to the death of a 10-month old baby and his 40-year-old godmother, who was cradling the baby in her lap at the time. Baby Abdur Smith and Tifara Samuels Hall were crushed when the Geo-Prism car in which they were passengers collided with an 18-wheeler truck after the car’s back end was clipped by a dump truck.
Golda Reynolds, who is the mother of the deceased child, told local reporters that little Abdul was about to fall asleep after being fed by Samuels when the tragedy struck. She said that she and Samuels were taking a recreational drive to Hattieville, after which they would have returned to Belize City, when the tragedy took place.
It appears that the driver of a truck in another lane had seen the driver of the dump truck shift the position of the truck as he began to make an attempt to drive past the vehicle in front of him, and realized that the space in the lane was too small for such a maneuver. He foresaw an imminent accident about to play out, and thus started to honk the horn of his truck to alert the driver of the dump truck, which had been positioned behind Reynold’s car. The driver of the dump truck then tried to pull the truck back into the lane, but in doing so he clipped the driver-side door and the back passenger door of the Geo Prism that Reynolds was driving— pinning it and pushing it into the other lane, and into an oncoming 18-wheel truck.
The driver of that 18-wheeler later told a local reporter, “I came off my truck to see what was happening and I saw the baby stuck there and so I reverse a little bit and I was calling the next guy from the other truck, but he didn’t want to come and help. As I stop and I see the baby I reverse a little bit to take out the baby. As we pulled out the baby, the baby died. I saw everything when the dump truck that was heading to Rockville, he hit the yellow truck in front of me and then I gave a little space, because all of us needs a space in the road, so I got closer to railing and gave the man a space, but I was not seeing that another car was in the opposite side going, so he hit the car and as he went on his lane, the car was spinning and it just slide in right in front of me.”
He claimed to have seen the 10-month-old child move his hand a bit— a last apparent indication of life before he passed away.
Reports are that baby Abdur died on the scene in his mother’s arms, while Tifara Hall passed away shortly after. Hall leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter.
Reynolds, the sole survivor of the incident, who said she has always taken great pains to be cautious on the road, said that she was partially blind for at least 1 hour after the incident and that in addition to bruises on her body, she sustained serious damage to her right leg and is currently unable to walk. She said that doctors have told her that they are not sure if she’ll be able to stand normally again.
A Notice of Intended Prosecution has been issued to the driver of dump truck and urine samples have been taken from all those involved. In a release from police