What started out as a routine morning commute for North Side resident Latoya Francis on 26 Nov. turned into a life-altering event.
“I saw what looked like someone was lying in the road, but at that point in time I thought I was seeing double really. When I got closer, I realised that, yes, there indeed was a man lying in the road,” Francis said in a recent interview with the Cayman Compass.
That man was 32-year-old Jamaican Paul Andrew Wright. He had been hit by a car on Shamrock Road, near Woodland Drive, that morning. He later died in hospital.
The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, in response to queries from the Compass, said no arrests have yet been made in connection to that fatal accident and the investigation is ongoing.
Wright was the second pedestrian to be killed in recent weeks.
On 4 Oct., a 31-year-old woman died after she was struck by a car in the condominium car park where she lived in West Bay.
According to RCIPS stats there have been nine road fatalities to date in 2020, 3 of which were pedestrians who were struck by a vehicle. All three happened in the last two months.
No time to think, just act
In Wright’s case, Francis was among the first to assist him as he fought for his life that fateful morning.
Francis said she knew she had to do something as she reached the collision site and realised the driver was in shock and no one was helping Wright.
“No one was going close to the body. I then grabbed my phone and started to call 911. When I called the first time, the phone rang out and so I had to hang up and call again. My initial thought of seeing him lying in the road was I really didn’t want him to die. He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t responding. I could hear him gasping for breath,” she said shakily.
Francis, who is certified in CPR and first aid, said she followed instructions from the 911 operator to check for bleeding and saw a wound on Wright’s neck.
Using her cardigan, she pressed down on the wound and by that time a man had come running with towels from a nearby property. He covered Wright.
Another man had also arrived on the scene to help and CPR was started.
She said at that time everything seemed so surreal.
“[That moment] was riddled in fear, but at the same time, the fact that somebody’s life hung in the balance, there was no room to not want to act,” she said, adding that it was the first time she had to apply the first aid she had learned.
After Wright was taken away in the ambulance, Francis said she broke down.
As she reflected on the whole incident and what she saw that morning, she said it left her angry and hurt.
Lack of humanity unnerving
She said she was angry to see the reaction of commuters who chose to look at the collision as a social-media opportunity.
“It made me realise that we live in a time where people have almost given up or sacrificed their sense of humanity to be able to say, ‘I was the one that videoed this.’ I feel like really and truly what we should be striving for is being in the position to say I was the one that was able to help,” she said.
However, Francis argued, society is instead focussed on “Let me capture it. Let me send it to this blog. Let me send it to our posts within my WhatsApp groups. So, people knew that I was the first one on the scene.”
She said what was more disturbing to her was the indifference displayed to Wright as he lay on the roadway fighting for his life.
“I was really disappointed at the fact that people were acting as if this man was just like a piece of metal in the road. It was surprising to me how much people were still so caught up in their own lives, getting to work on time,” she lamented.
People were driving around the body, Francis said, and in some cases close to Wright. At one point, she said she had to stand at his feet with her arms open wide so drivers would not crush him as they passed by.
She said the whole situation has changed the way she intends to live her life.
“It was a wake-up call and my prayer after that was ‘God if I ever get to the place where a job stops me from helping someone in need, Lord, I will quit,’” she said.
Francis added when she heard the news that Wright had passed away, she cried because she had wanted it to be a story of victory for him.
“You still want to hear that story of a miracle that took place. I just kept thinking, Lord if those of us that stopped to actually help weren’t there with him, this man would have died by himself in the middle of a road, in a country that’s not his own,” she said.
Francis said she would like to see Caymankind not just be branding.
“If we’re going to talk about Caymankind being in such a small community that we live in, to me that is what Caymankind… is – being our brother’s keeper.”
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