Paul A. Reid, Staff Reporter
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MALCOLM (left) and CARGILL(right)
WESTERN BUREAU:
FORMER NATIONAL midfielder Peter 'Jair' Cargill who died as a result of massive internal injuries he suffered when the bus in which he was travelling to Montego Bay on Saturday crashed in St Ann has become the third former national football player to die in a traffic accident.
Stephen 'Shorty' Malcolm, who was in the starting team with Cargill when Jamaica made its historic debut at the World Cup level when they faced Croatia on June 14, 1998, in Lens, France, was the first to die. Malcolm died of injuries he suffered in a car accident along Spring Hill in Trelawny on January 28, 2001 when he and teammate Theodore Whitmore and a friend, Charles Ewan, were on their way back from a friendly international against Bulgaria at the National Stadium.
Whitmore and Malcolm had taken part in the game.
Last September, another former player, Winston Anglin, who played alongside Cargill in the Jamaican midfield, was one of five men who were killed when the car in which they were travelling to Montego Bay crashed in St Ann. The men were returning to Montego Bay after watching Jamaica lose to Panama in a CONCACAF World Cup semi-final qualifier at the National Stadium.
These tragic accidents were not the first time members of the national football team were getting involved in car accidents, as in February 1998, after the team had qualified for the World Cup, four western members were involved in an early morning mishap.
As a result, veteran central defender Durrent 'Tatty' Brown was admitted to the Falmouth Hospital in a semi-conscious state while the others, Whitmore, goalkeeper Warren Barrett and Malcolm escaped serious injuries.
The players had just recently returned home from the United States following the CONCACAF Gold Cup where they had finished fourth and were returning to Kingston for a training camp to prepare for a game against a Nigerian national team at the National Stadium.
Reports then were that about 2:30 a.m. a green Nissan Sunny owned and driven by Barrett collided with an Isuzu pick-up carrying three persons, at the intersection of Market and Duke streets in Falmouth. Stephen Malcolm, Theodore Whitmore and Brown were passengers in Barrett's car.
The three other persons involved in the accident Graham Pitt, Everton Linton and Albert Linton were travelling with Barrett, Whitmore and Malcolm, treated and released from hospital.
