A father of one and a Form Four student are dead and three others hospitalised after the car they were travelling in collided with a truck in Siparia yesterday. The accident was one of two in the southland yesterday. According to reports, around 3 pm Nicholas Phill, 25, of Robert Hill Trace, Siparia, was driving his Nissan B14 car when it picked up a skid coming down a hill and collided with a truck loaded with dirt on Robert Hill.
Phill, who lived minutes away from the scene of the accident, was nearly decapitated by the impact and firefighters had to use the jaws of life to remove his body from the mangled wreck. His front seat passenger, Kai Lewis, 16, a student of the Fyzabad Anglican Secondary School, was also killed instantly. Lewis’s father was on the scene but was too distraught to speak to the T&T Guardian.
The truck driver, who was not identified, along with the two school boys who were in the back seat of Phill’s car, which he was working as a “PH” taxi, were taken to the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH). Phill’s father, Errol, said a leaking WASA pipeline may be the reason why he lost his only son. “He was coming down the hill and he pick up a skid. You could see the truckman tried to ‘brakes’ from hitting him but he (Nicholas) still run into it.
“This water on the road here two weeks now. WASA not doing anything about it. It already form moss here,” he said. He described his son as a loving, obedient child who never disrespected him. “Nicholas never steups at me, never give me backtalk. That boy was really the best son,” he said. He sent out sympathy to the family of Lewis. “I want them to know I grieving for my son and theirs. I didn’t get a chance to talk to them while they was here but I want them to know how sorry we are for their loss.”
Phill’s common-law wife, Melissa Baptiste, was inconsolable last night as she related the last time she saw him alive. The couple has a two-year-old daughter named Shania. “Daddy supposed to be on the bed all now, playing with you,” she wailed. Little Shania was already asking when her father was coming home, Baptiste said. She described Phill as a loving, humble man who was working taxi to ensure his family had enough for the Christmas season.
“I tell him stay home today, he say ‘no,’ he will go and come back in time to go to church for 6 o’clock,” she said. The couple were planning to get married next February.