Prime Minister Bruce Golding looks down at the Ford truck which plunged over a precipice in Dam Bridge, Portland, resulting in the deaths of 14 persons on Friday night. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer

A nurse who was part of the emergency team that rushed to Dam Bridge, Portland, where 14 people aboard a market truck plunged to death Friday, described the ravine scene as a macabre collage of *lo** and bodies.

Rackell Wilson, 23, said the bottom of the precipice was dark and heavily saturated with water from a river, and bodies were strewn all over. To make matters worse, the entire area was covered in *lo**.

"There were bodies which had bones protruding from the skin; a man was bleeding through his mouth, nose and ears, while a woman's face was banged in. And that little boy, Neiko Palmer, was covered in *lo**," she said.

"The victims of Friday's accident were ordinary individuals, who were trying to earn their own income but instead died, some of them with faces flattened, arms bent around their backs, and necks twisted in the opposite direction."

Higgler's career over

Novelette Fuller, a wife and mother of four who has been a higgler for the last three years, has vowed to find a new job after surviving the deadliest accident on the nation's roads in 30 years.

With 15-year-old twin daughters and two sons aged 25 and 18 years, Fuller is insisting her career as a higgler is over.

"This is the last straw. I am going to find a new occupation, as this kind of life is too risky," Fuller, who is recuperating at the Port Antonio Hospital, told The Gleaner yesterday. "This accident is a wake-up call for me and this time I am answering that call. I have my kids and husband to live for, and to me that is very important."

Lots of screaming

Though in pain and shock from the ordeal, the painful imagery of the accident is fresh in her mind. She credits God for preserving her life.

"We were travelling in the vicinity of Dam Bridge near Rivers View, in the Rio Grande Valley, when the truck suddenly swerved to avoid colliding with another vehicle," she said. "The truck started to plunge into the gully, and I remembered distinctly that persons were screaming."

The vendor said the tragedy could have been far worse had her twins made the fateful trip.