Motorcyclists die in head-on crash

When Jason 'Romi' Salmon crashed his motorcycle and was injured last Tuesday, his mother, Joan Salmon, said she prayed for him, and asked God to shield him from any harm.

A week later, however, Romi, 33, was involved in another accident. This time it was fatal. He was involved in a double motorcycle crash along the Oxford main road, St Elizabeth. Both riders died.

According to the St Elizabeth police, the other motorcyclist, Jason Taylor, 22, of Brompton in the parish, was driving a Cobra motorcycle towards Santa Cruz when he allegedly overtook a motor car and collided with Romi, who was driving a Hirev motorcycle in the opposite direction.

Both men received multiple injuries and were taken to hospital where they were pronounced dead. The accident took place about 6:30 p.m.

The day before the crash

Romi's mother said she last saw him the day before the crash and asked him about the injury he sustained the week before.

"Me ask if him foot feel better and him say yes, because the bike did lick him down last week, and him sprain him foot," Salmon, 66, told THE STAR.

"From him drop off a the bike me just never really trust it and ask God fi cover him on the road, but now him crash again and him never live to see another day."

Salmon said that while she was in Black River, she saw two wreckers with some motorcycles on them.

"How I saw the bike mash up, I said somebody must dead. But I never know it was Romi. Me did a wonder if a me other son or one a me grandson because the bike wah me see pon the truck look like me other son bike," she told THE STAR. About two hours later, she was called to identify the body of her youngest of five sons, Romi, who was born on Christmas Day.

"About after six in the evening me get a call say Romi crash and dead and instantly me get weak. Me affi call on God and ask him to uplift me and give me strength," said a grieving Salmon. "It hard on me. Everybody pray for me and say me must try to keep strong, but trust me, it nuh easy at all. Them always call him 'Christmas' because he was always giving and helping out. If you call him to do anything he was always willing to do it and very jovial. Him always a make sure me good, too, because him love him mother a lot."

Romi, the mother revealed, had his motorcycle for a while, as he depended on it to get from his Oxford home to his job at a pimento factory at Spring Park, also in the parish.

Statistics from the Road Safety Unit indicate that as of yesterday, 146 persons have been killed in road crashes, 49 of whom were on motorcycles.