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Failed hijacking
One gunman dead, another battling for life
BY COREY ROBINSON Sunday Observer staff reporter coreyr@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, May 03, 2009
ONE of two gunmen who police say yesterday attempted to hijack an International Freightliner trailer laden with cement in the Bog Walk Gorge, St Catherine, was crushed to death and his accomplice seriously injured after the vehicle careened off the road and crashed into the Rio Cobre embankment.
The trailer driver and a female passenger, whose names are being witheld, escaped unhurt. However, the gunmen, Lloyd Donegal, 21, was taken to the morgue while Shawn Cox, 18, was in hospital battling for life up to press time.
A wrecker removes a trailer which ran off the Bog Walk Gorge main road and crashed into the Rio Cobre embankment in St Catherine, following a foiled robbery attempt yesterday. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)
The police said Donegal was crushed when the trailer's bonnet pinned him against a huge boulder. His body had to be dug from beneath a pile of cement. Cox, meanwhile, sustained several broken bones when he landed on rocks after being thrown from the vehicle. A .38 revolver was allegedly found at the scene.
Corporal Oliver Johnson of the Bog Walk Police Station told the Sunday Observer that the incident started about 2:30 am when the men - both of them from Spanish Town in the parish - attempted to hijack the trailer in the vicinity of the Flat Bridge. The driver had been heading from Bog Walk to Linstead.
"Both gunmen came up on either steps of the vehicle. The one on the driver's side brandished a gun and ordered him to stop, but he didn't," Johnson said. "He (the driver) began wrestling with him through the window, and the gunman fired two shots into the vehicle. That was when the driver lost control and the trailer ended up here," Johnson added, pointing to a section of the river opposite the famous 'Pum' rock.
Johnson could not say definitively how the female passenger escaped, but according to onlookers, she leaped from the vehicle seconds before it crashed. The driver reportedly went over with the vehicle.
A police officer keeps careful watch over a group of people as they shovel cement into buckets and crocus bags, following a foiled robbery attempt in the Bog Walk Gorge in St Catherine yesterday. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)
Yesterday, the traumatised driver wandered wearily about as dozens of people converged on the scene, scurrying to retrieve the spilled cement from the river.
Concerned about his safety, the driver ran when he was approached by reporters.
"How I feel? I could have died," he replied abruptly, before walking way with the female passenger in tow.
He was soon lost among the crowd of people who were busy collecting cement from the ground. Most of them were covered in cement dust.
It took two wreckers - utilising several strategies - about three hours to remove the mangled trailer from the river. Fire-fighters were later called in to wash away a large gasoline spill
from the roadway.
The incident caused a traffic gridlock at both ends of the busy thoroughfare linking Kingston and sections of St Catherine, as police officers cordoned across the roadway to allow the wreckers to remove the vehicle from the river bank.
The police later told the Sunday Observer that just under 500 of the 900 bags of cement that had been on trailer were recovered from the wreckage.
While the police kept a keen watch over the people collecting the spilled cement, the officers were quick to point out that many of them had in fact assisted in loading the undamaged bags unto another truck.
"We don't want to say that they are looting, really. They assisted in putting the unopened bags of cement on the other truck; you could say that they are being compensated for their assistance. Besides, most of the cement went into the river," said a senior officer on the scene.
One man told the Sunday Observer that yesterday's incident had given him an opportunity to finally complete construction on his house.
"I only happy that the driver did not get hurt and that it is the gunmen them who feel it. But ah happy that this happen because is long time my house a build and can't finish. I don't have to worry about the cement again," he said laughingly as he wiped a sticky mixture of sweat and cement from his eyelids.
Another man, after climbing up the embankment with a half-bag of cement in hand, said, "Newsman, make sure you don't tell the news wrong, is not loot we looting. We help them save what them can, so everything else is our own, right?
"
One gunman dead, another battling for life
BY COREY ROBINSON Sunday Observer staff reporter coreyr@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, May 03, 2009
ONE of two gunmen who police say yesterday attempted to hijack an International Freightliner trailer laden with cement in the Bog Walk Gorge, St Catherine, was crushed to death and his accomplice seriously injured after the vehicle careened off the road and crashed into the Rio Cobre embankment.
The trailer driver and a female passenger, whose names are being witheld, escaped unhurt. However, the gunmen, Lloyd Donegal, 21, was taken to the morgue while Shawn Cox, 18, was in hospital battling for life up to press time.
A wrecker removes a trailer which ran off the Bog Walk Gorge main road and crashed into the Rio Cobre embankment in St Catherine, following a foiled robbery attempt yesterday. (Photo: Naphtali Junior) The police said Donegal was crushed when the trailer's bonnet pinned him against a huge boulder. His body had to be dug from beneath a pile of cement. Cox, meanwhile, sustained several broken bones when he landed on rocks after being thrown from the vehicle. A .38 revolver was allegedly found at the scene.
Corporal Oliver Johnson of the Bog Walk Police Station told the Sunday Observer that the incident started about 2:30 am when the men - both of them from Spanish Town in the parish - attempted to hijack the trailer in the vicinity of the Flat Bridge. The driver had been heading from Bog Walk to Linstead.
"Both gunmen came up on either steps of the vehicle. The one on the driver's side brandished a gun and ordered him to stop, but he didn't," Johnson said. "He (the driver) began wrestling with him through the window, and the gunman fired two shots into the vehicle. That was when the driver lost control and the trailer ended up here," Johnson added, pointing to a section of the river opposite the famous 'Pum' rock.
Johnson could not say definitively how the female passenger escaped, but according to onlookers, she leaped from the vehicle seconds before it crashed. The driver reportedly went over with the vehicle.
A police officer keeps careful watch over a group of people as they shovel cement into buckets and crocus bags, following a foiled robbery attempt in the Bog Walk Gorge in St Catherine yesterday. (Photo: Naphtali Junior) Yesterday, the traumatised driver wandered wearily about as dozens of people converged on the scene, scurrying to retrieve the spilled cement from the river.
Concerned about his safety, the driver ran when he was approached by reporters.
"How I feel? I could have died," he replied abruptly, before walking way with the female passenger in tow.
He was soon lost among the crowd of people who were busy collecting cement from the ground. Most of them were covered in cement dust.
It took two wreckers - utilising several strategies - about three hours to remove the mangled trailer from the river. Fire-fighters were later called in to wash away a large gasoline spill
from the roadway.The incident caused a traffic gridlock at both ends of the busy thoroughfare linking Kingston and sections of St Catherine, as police officers cordoned across the roadway to allow the wreckers to remove the vehicle from the river bank.
The police later told the Sunday Observer that just under 500 of the 900 bags of cement that had been on trailer were recovered from the wreckage.
While the police kept a keen watch over the people collecting the spilled cement, the officers were quick to point out that many of them had in fact assisted in loading the undamaged bags unto another truck.
"We don't want to say that they are looting, really. They assisted in putting the unopened bags of cement on the other truck; you could say that they are being compensated for their assistance. Besides, most of the cement went into the river," said a senior officer on the scene.
One man told the Sunday Observer that yesterday's incident had given him an opportunity to finally complete construction on his house.
"I only happy that the driver did not get hurt and that it is the gunmen them who feel it. But ah happy that this happen because is long time my house a build and can't finish. I don't have to worry about the cement again," he said laughingly as he wiped a sticky mixture of sweat and cement from his eyelids.
Another man, after climbing up the embankment with a half-bag of cement in hand, said, "Newsman, make sure you don't tell the news wrong, is not loot we looting. We help them save what them can, so everything else is our own, right?
"
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