An employee of Bobby Noel’s General Store was crushed to death yesterday when a sand pit caved in on him at the Wisroc One Mile junction.
Rene Jacobs, aka ‘Country’, 29, of 285 One Mile Wismar, was crushed to death shortly after 11 am. The man was at the time eating under the tray of a tractor. When the operator started loading the tractor, the pit caved in.
Jacobs and other members of his crew had just returned to the pit after their third trip. According to the driver of the tractor, Sean Campbell, the unfortunate incident occurred in a matter of seconds. He related that a few minutes earlier Jacobs went under the rear of the tractor’s tray “to tek a fine snack”.
Campbell had gotten off the tractor and was heading towards the head of the pit when he realized that the tractor was coming behind him although the engine was turned off and there was no one in the driver’s seat.
“When I look around I see deh whole wall coming down like a big wave and it push away deh tractor.”
The driver said that he immediately remembered that Jacobs was under the tractor and rushed to the spot where he thought the man was.
“I see he foot kicking up and we try fuh dig to get he head but by the time we get he, he done dead.”
Persons estimated the height of the sand wall that fell to have been more than thirty feet.
Proprietor of Bobby Noel’s General Store, Wayne Noel described Jacobs as a hard worker who was employed with him for approximately six years. Noel said that he was saddened by the incident and felt that his employee was crushed by the impact of the sand since he was bleeding through the nose when they retrieved the body.
News reached the mother of his child a few minutes after the body was taken to the Upper Demerara Hospital (UDH).
On her arrival at the hospital she was of the opinion that the father of her child was seriously injured. She broke down in tears after asking several times to see him and was subsequently told that he was dead as Noel pointed to his body wrapped in a blue tarpaulin in the back of the tractor.
“Why, why, why ‘Country’ why, he only 29-years-old and gon be 30 in September, why?” the woman wailed. She said that most of his relatives lived out of Linden and he had fathered two other children who live in Georgetown.
