According to reports from more than one source, a quarrel between husband and wife shortly after 9:00 on Sunday morning while they were driving toward Belize City, led to the driver losing control of his Toyota 4-Runner and the vehicle veered off the road, plunging into the Belize River between Miles 6 and 7 on the Northern Highway. His wife died as a result.
Odwey Flowers, 33, a resident of Los Lagos, managed to make it to safety, but his wife, Kendra Smith-Flowers, 31, could not get out of the vehicle – which lay about 23 feet below, at the bottom of the river- and drowned.
Flowers’ vehicle lay submerged for more than five hours before it was finally pulled out by a heavy duty crane.
A large number of onlookers had gathered on both sides of the Northern Highway, where traffic in both directions was disrupted and had slowed to a virtual standstill, as the operation to pull up the Flowers’ vehicle got underway around 2:00 p.m.
The family members of Smith-Flowers, who had gathered at the site of the accident, were evidently traumatized by the long time it took for the body to be recovered from the river.
When the Belize Coast Guard arrived on the scene quite a long time after the vehicle had gone down, they came without the necessary equipment to execute a professional dive to retrieve Kendra’s body.
Then the much talked-about “one million dollar” sonar-equipped vessel that the Belize Port Authority recently acquired could not be deployed for a number of reasons, one of them being that the boat was too expensive “to risk hitting a log in the river.”
The full complement of Belize’s emergency response apparatus was on hand. The Fire Department was there with one of its impressive looking fire tenders. Belize Emergency Response Team (BERT) was there with an ambulance waiting. Even the Belize Defence Force was there, with their assault rifles, but they were all ill-equipped for a situation where a vehicle had run off the road and plunged into a deep river with a person trapped inside.
A Canadian woman, Stephany Lupp, jumped into the water immediately after the accident had occurred to see if she could help find Kendra in the murky waters, but was unsuccessful, saying the current was very strong, and the water very murky.
Eventually, two United States Army divers attached to the Belize Defence Force were called sometime after 12:30 p.m. The Toyota 4-Runner was located a few minutes after the two divers, Brian Scott, 31, and Joseph Rivera, 28, hit the waters. It was lying on is top.
According to the official police report about the accident, the Toyota 4-Runner was on its way from Ladyville to Belize City when the driver, Odwey Flowers, lost control and the vehicle ran into the river.
But information to Amandala is that Odwey and his wife were quarrelling in the vehicle, and she, in anger, either pulled or pushed the steering wheel. Additionally, we were also informed that shortly after the accident, Odwey Flowers, who had barely escaped with his life, was assaulted by his wife’s irate sisters, who accused him of causing her death.
Police Press Officer Clement Palacio told us that he could not confirm the reports of the Flowers’ quarrel in the vehicle, but he did say that he heard that Flowers had been attacked.
This afternoon Amandala spoke, on condition of anonymity, with a person who was travelling in a vehicle that was heading toward Belize City, who told us that when he passed by the spot where the accident had occurred, he saw one of the women, who was in a group of people, slap a young man across his face.
The young man appeared to be in a state of shock, and the person who slapped him was described as a heavy-set brown-skinned woman with red, shoulder-length hair. She appeared to be very upset, the passerby noted, and the police on the scene tried to separate the two of them. This was shortly after 10:15 a.m., the passing passenger said.
According to a family member, however, Flowers swerved to avoid collision with an oncoming vehicle, but there is nothing to act as a buffer between a vehicle and the river, which is just a few feet away, so the vehicle instantly slid into the water.
On May 16, 2009, Kendra Smith and Odwey Flowers were married. The couple had no children. They would normally travel to Belize City to have breakfast with their families on Sundays.
Kendra recently obtained a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Florida. She had worked at the Belize Bank, then in the audit department of Atlantic Bank, and Odwey, also a banker, is employed at Caye Bank International on Ambergris Caye.
Odwey was admitted to the Medical Associates Hospital suffering from minor injuries, but according to Arthur Saldivar, a high school friend of Odwey, he was heavily sedated. Today, Monday, he is just beginning to come to terms with the reality that he lost his wife in the accident, said Saldivar.
We understand that some works were supposed to begin a few weeks ago on the side of the river bank, but the reason is unclear as to why the project was not started.