Accused: I saw flash of red

The defence followed the prosecution, closing its case against the 35-year-old salesman, of Clapham Road, Christ Church, in the trial before Justice Donna Babb-Agard in Supreme Court No. 4A.

Brathwaite, who is still employed as a driver, said he was a van sales driver on July 30, 2018, and remembered coming from the Sugar Hill direction and reaching by “a funny left turn by a breadfruit tree” before coming around a corner, onto a broken bridge by a church. As he passed the church rain started drizzling so he came up the hill in second gear and came around a left hand corner, “when the front and rear left wheels dropped off the road in what I assumed was a broken piece of road”.

The front wheel of the company van dropped in first, then the back one, he said, adding, that he came out of the hole, accelerated, selected third gear and that is when “a flash of red” appeared.

He tried to slide to the right so the motorcyclist could continue going to his [Brathwaite’s] left, because he was already heading in that direction. However, when Knight “pulled right, we ended up hitting”.

“Just before the impact, I turned my head ’cause I could see he was coming directly to the windshield, so I turned my head. After the impact I remember the van still rolling; I pushed the brake and came off the clutch the same time which cut the engine,” he explained.

Responding to his attorney Corey Beckles, Brathwaite said he “wasn’t sure exactly what the red was”.

“I didn’t know if it was the vehicle, if it was the shirt, I just saw the red appear and I reacted,” he said.

After the van stopped rolling, he leaned on the door since “it wouldn’t open easily”, got out, felt his way around the van to the road and started to dust off the glass and cleared his eyes enough to open the passenger door and call the police, followed by the ambulance service, the police again and then his manager.

While across the road from the van and on the phone with his manager, he noticed blood so he called back the police

to tell them there was blood coming off his vehicle roof, especially since he was not seeing the man on the road or beside the van. He called the Barbados Fire Service as well.

“An older gentleman” who was a passing motorist, stopped and tried persuading him to sit rather than move around, but he ignored him. The stranger left after the first responders arrived.

He said he also spoke to Knight at the scene “two or three times in between phone calls”, recalling Knight’s request for Brathwaite to make a call for him because he had no phone on him.

Another vehicle turned up at the scene with three men, one called “Cat” who sat on the roof of the van with the injured Knight.

“When I went in the back of the van for water to wash the glass off my face, I also gave him water for Mr Knight.

“I remember cutting a piece of box off one of the containers in the back to give him to keep the drizzles and the sun off Mr Knight while we were waiting.”

When he was asked about his emotional state after the accident, Brathwaite said he did not sleep well after the accident and felt “offset” for some time.

“It is honestly not easy,” he said.

Under crossexamination by prosecutor State Counsel Anastacia McMeo-Boyce, appearing along with Principal State Counsel Joyann Catwell, Brathwaite said he obtained a heavy duty truck licence in December 2017 and started working in January 2018. It was his second or third time driving on Castle Grant Road, which he did not know very well.

He said that when the vehicles collided he had moved more toward the middle of the road in an effort to let Knight continue coming to his [Brathwaite’s] left.

When the prosecutor put it to him that he caused the accident by doing so, and had driven dangerously that day, the accused denied it. (SD)