TENESHA Cordwell would love to forget the afternoon of last Thursday, New Year's Day.

She was sitting under a tree in her front yard overlooking Brompton square about 15 miles west of Santa Cruz, when her brother Raj sped past in his Mitsubishi Lancer only for him and two others to meet their deaths seconds later.

On Friday when she spoke to the Sunday Observer, Tenesha recalled the awful, thunderous sound as the car - having rounded the corner at Brompton Square and gone out of her view - crashed into the left side of an oncoming truck.
She remembers crying out "lawd gad, mi bredda dead, mi nephew dead!"

As it turned out, her nephew Oliver Cordwell, 20, who was in the front passenger seat of the left-hand drive car, escaped with mild concussion and bruises. But Raj Cordwell, 25, a graphic designer employed to the University of Technology (UTECH), who was less than a mile from his family home at Lewis Town, died on the spot.

Two teenagers who were on the back seat - Kennijah 'baller' Stewart, 17, who attended Lacovia High and Khrisdale 'OJ' Facey, 17, a student of Sydney Pagon High - also died instantly. Stewart and Facey, cousins from the same neighbourhood in Goshen, a few miles east of Santa Cruz, were described on Friday as "inseparable" in life.

Kennijah Stewart as he receives his school leaving certificate.

The fifth person - the only female in the car - 15-year-old Olivia Facey, younger sister of Khrisdale and a student of Lacovia High, remained in hospital yesterday nursing head and other injuries.

The driver of the truck, 53-year-old Nicholas Hart of Whitehall District in North West St Elizabeth, apparently escaped unhurt.
Raj and his young friends were reportedly on their way to pick up Oliver's friend Deondra Facey, older sister of Khrisdale and Olivia, in Brompton prior to a trip to the Font Hill Beach Park, just a few miles further west.

Reports vary but all suggest that ultimately the accident which occurred at about 3:40 pm was triggered by speeding. The Constabulary Communication Network says that "On reaching a section of the road, Raj tried to avoid an oncoming mini-bus that was overtaking the Leyland motor truck. He lost control of the motor car which ran under the truck..."

Brompton resident Byron Graham who was sitting at the round-about at the centre of the square told the Sunday Observer that he suddenly became aware of the speeding left-hand drive car "right beside me".

The car, he appeared to suggest, was going so fast that it had drifted from the left side of the road to the right as it negotiated the bend in the square.

"Some people say the car get out of control because it swing away from the bus which overtake the truck," he said. "But from what I saw, the bus had already overtaken the truck from down the road when the car come beside me. The trouble was that the car was on the right side of the road and had to swing back to the left, but is like 'im swing too hard and had to come back right..."

He told how the Mitsubishi Lancer over-corrected itself to the left and then made its fatal swing, back across the face of the truck to end up in the bigger, slower vehicle's left side.

"It was bad, very, very bad," said Graham, his face forlorn.

In the small village of Lewis Town, just down the road from the scene of the tragedy, Raj's mother Nilgo Cordwell, surrounded by family and friends, struggled with her grief.
Raj had been one of six children and the first to "go", she said. "He was a friendly, good, quiet person and always humble," she added.

Twenty miles away in Goshen, Sharon Stewart, a mother of three including Kennijah, was a picture of despair. She told of how Kennijah, who had been a member of his school's cadet corp, had planned a military career.

"Only last week 'im seh to mi 'Mummy, as soon as mi lef school mi a go straight in the army, nuh worry yu self''," said Stewart.

A few hundred metres away, also in Goshen, Deondra Facey who heard of the tragedy as she fried chicken for the beach trip, spoke of her brother Khrisdale as a fun-loving, jocular person and a friend.

"You couldn't say anything bad about him, he was a good person and he was my friend," said Deondra.