Leighton Levy, Star Writer

Six people believed to be coming from a party are in hospital nursing injuries following a motor vehicle mishap along Long Lane, St Andrew, yesterday morning. According to the police and an eye witness, the vehicle collided with a utility pole after the driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel.

Police from the Constant Spring Police Traffic Department confirmed the incident with a spokesman saying that at the time of the STAR's enquiries, only one passenger was conscious, and as such their investigations were still ongoing. They revealed however, that one of the injured was taken to the University Hospital of the West Indies while the others were taken to the Kingston Public Hospital.

But according to Charles Cousins, a JUTA cab driver, who was driving behind the ill-fated vehicle going down Long Lane towards Kingston, the accident was nasty and he feared for the lives of the passengers.

were sleeping

He told THE STAR that about 7:30 a.m., the vehicle, a grey or silver car, began swerving across the roadway. He immediately suspected that something was wrong. "If something was coming up the road they would have slammed into it," he said. "I thought they were sleeping so I started blowing and blowing but nobody responded, then it slammed head-on into the light post."

Cousins said he drove by the wreckage and pulled over and went back to see if the passengers were all right. "No one was moving in the car," he said. "The driver was bleeding from his nose and mouth. Everybody in the car was bleeding but the driver most of all; he was very, very bad."

By then, he said people began running out of their homes to see what had happened and eventually the police arrived on the scene. Cousins said he suspects that the passengers were coming from a party in Junction that ended a short while earlier.

Initial reports had suggested that there were at least two emerging entertainers inside the vehicle but the police were unable to confirm. Cousins believes that if there were entertainers in the car they would not be any big names among them.