TAIPEI, Taiwan: – A Vincentian man died in a car crash in New York on Sunday morning that left five others, including his girlfriend, nursing injuries.
Auto mechanic Claudius Durrant, 32, died on the spot in Brooklyn after the van he was driving hit a pothole and spun out of control while exiting Kings Highway, younger brother Dexter Durrant told I Witness-News.
He said that the van flipped, broke a utility pole, and ran into a fence before sliding back onto the street.
His brother died about two minutes after the accident, Durrant said. (Follow I Witness-News on Facebook)
“By the time the paramedic arrived, he was already dead.”
Four other men from Durrant’s Rillan Hill community in South Leeward, St. Vincent, and the girlfriend of the deceased, whom his brother identified as Latoya, were also travelling in the vehicle.
Information reaching I Witness-News indicate that Kenwrick Durrant – a cousin of the deceased, Casmus Francis, Martin Phillips, and Romaldo Jack received various injuries as a result of the accident.
“[I am] praying for my brother who was in a [vehicular] accident early [this] morning; thanking [the] Almighty [that] he made it and praying for his friend’s family who lost a brother and a son. But my [brother] is in the hospital [right] now and two of his other friends,” Francis’s older sister wrote on her Facebook page on Sunday.
“R.I.P Claudius and get well me partner [Casmus]. Got the said news this morning and I was like, “… [I] almost lost so [many] of my boys I grew up with in Bigbush, [Rillan Hill]. Just be strong…” Randolph Durham wrote in response.
Durrant told I Witness-New that his family was “trying”.
“We gotta be strong, but what can we do? We really can’t do anything,” he said.
He said that his family was planning a memorial service in New York and then his brother’s body would be returned to St. Vincent for burial.