A thirty-one year old woman is tonight clinging to life at the K.H.M.H. after she was struck by a government vehicle. The accident happened at just after nine this morning at mile eight on the George Price Highway. Elisa Hunter had just gotten off a bus and was crossing the road to her workplace when the 2015 Land Cruiser Prado assigned to Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington hit her. The vehicle was being driven at the time by twenty-five year old Amir Garcia, who was taking Elrington to Belmopan to attend Cabinet. Elrington says that he was reading when he noticed his driver becoming agitated and blowing his horn just before the massive impact. News Five has gotten footage of the accident which shows the vehicle striking Hunter and flinging her into the air. We warn that the images may not be suitable for all audiences.
Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Wilfred Elrington
“I looked up and I saw this young lady had just alighted from a bus. The bus was going in that direction. She alighted across there on the right hand side going west and immediately as she alighted she started to walk into the path of the traffic. But another vehicle was coming right after the bus, a UNDP pickup truck and she narrowly escaped being hit by the UNDP vehicle. But as that passed, she continued to come into the road. Then she stopped momentarily then she continued again; bolted towards the south to where she works across the road. While that is happening, my driver is applying brakes and also turning to the left to try to escape her because she alighted from the right and she was going towards the left. And she ended right in the front of it, smack in the front. And she was knocked maybe about three or four feet away from where the vehicle hit her, she fell. But I couldn’t leave here there because she was lying in the middle of the road as you see and vehicles are coming up and down, up and down. And the driver just lifted her and we brought her right to the side here. See we brought her to the side and in the process of that, got some blood on my pants. We immediately got out and called the ambulance and called other people. It was then to nine and the ambulance came about nine-thirty.”
Mike Rudon
“Could you tell us what injuries you observed on this young lady?”
Wilfred Elrington
“She seem to have been bleeding from the head—not profusely, but there was blood around the head. Not that there was a gush of blood, we just saw evidence of blood around the head. No bleeding through her nose or mouth, but there was a little blood in the vicinity of her mouth and around her head. One of her legs seemed to have been damaged; that had an unusual appearance.”
Mike Rudon
“Was she conscious when you and the driver came out to help her?”
Wilfred Elrington
“She was complaining…she was in pain. She hadn’t lost her consciousness. She was a person who continued to move her hands. She was moving her arms and she was groaning as if were in pain. I didn’t get the sense that she had lost consciousness, but obviously she was in intense pain.”
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