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Michaela Muscat and Ray Attard
Qrendi woke up in shock yesterday morning after losing five of its younger citizens in a car accident on the newly opened Zebbug road. Police and Civil Protection officers were alerted in the early hours of Saturday and closed traffic access to the area.
Photographs taken by MaltaToday photographer Ray Attard show the extent of the damage to the Vauxhall car which was carrying eight teenagers at the time of the tragic accident. The bodies of the young men also appear strewn around the destroyed car.
Marco Abdilla 17, Fabio Magro 16, Oswaldo Vella, 18, Christian Camilleri 18 and David Sacco only13, were all active members at the Santa Maria club at Qrendi. The five died on the spot in one of the worst traffic accidents in the Maltese Islands in recent years.
The other three in the car are badly injured and were taken to hospital for medical attention at around 1.00am yesterday. A police officer confirmed there were an excessive number of passengers in the Vauxhall Astra.
Police and other experts are assisting Magistrate Dr Lawrence Quintano with further inquiries. One of the forensic officers who viewed the corpses, was reportedly in shock as he discovered that they were all from his home town Qrendi.
MaltaToday is informed the skid marks at the scene of the accident were “at least a good 50 metres, and the wall they crashed into was completely demolished.”
A senior officer with the civil protection department said the driver could have been over-speeding and that the five who died flew out of the window and hit the crash barrier and the road surface.
Motorists who spoke to MaltaToday however said the lighting used on the new Zebbug road has a blinding effect on drivers passing through the road.
Politicians and journalists congregated to the idyllic village of Qrendi yesterday after the tragic death of the five teenagers. “This village is only ever in the news whenever a tragedy happens,” one of the bystanders outside the Santa Maria band club said.
The president of the club, Martin Formosa, is responsible for the funeral arrangements of the teenagers who were known and loved by all the village.
“We will need four churches to hold all of the people on Sunday,” says Mikiel Cutajar, a bystander. “All of the boys gave their utmost for this village. They had volunteered to the 15 August community Radio and played with the band and helped out with the village decorations come feast time.”
Fundraising was their speciality: “They were always asking for permission to help out by organising fun events to fund the new band club,” Formosa says.
On this fateful start of the weekend, the seven boys had decided to take some time out and celebrate the birthday of 16-year-old Fabio at a barbeque held at Villa Maria, limits of Buskett. Fabio was remembered for being particularly good at playing the French Horn with the band club.
Panic must have ensued when the taxi driver who had to pick the seven boys up did not show up at Villa Maria. When in August the same taxi driver had also failed to show up after a trip they had made to the Qala feast in Gozo, the boys opted to hitch lifts to get back home, having no intention of getting home late as they had strict curfews.
“They ended up meeting death,” says the mother of another friend of the boys’, Manuel Magro, her eyes also brimming with tears as she empathises with the other mothers, one of whom she heard wailing all morning as she could not bear the thought that her son had died in such circumstances. “This Saturday was the second time that we had to go to Paceville, probably at the Empire night club,” Manuel Magro, who also accompanied them on Friday night, said.
“Exemplary boys, pillars of society,” were ringing in the ears of all the journalists in the bustling street incorporating all the band clubs and just round the corner from the alley where one of the boys lived.
Everyone had a good word to say about the boys who at such a tender age had only started venturing out of the village: Magro had not been allowed to join them at the barbeque because he had to help his mother with her chores at the band club. Their other friends, “Suzie, Marthese and Stef were not allowed to go either.” With red eyes, barely visible under his swollen eyelids, he was reluctant to talk but later he softly said they were a tight-knit group from their early years. They were inseparable having spent five years at the local lyceum together.
All of the teenagers had connections to the band club as Marian, a mother of one the boys’ friends Nancy, confirms. “Nancy had band practice. This morning I heard the phone ring then I heard her cry and scream and when I asked her what had happened, she told me that her friends had died.”
They were “very obedient and pleasant young men” who made it a point to keep everyone, especially their parents, happy.
On the doorstep of the MLP club Mikiel Cutajar points to the parking spot where “two cars of crying school-friends” spent the time all morning. Cutajar stands in front of a black sash by the wall of the band club. All the flags in the village are flying at half-mast.
“It’s so awful that I have to read the news tonight and you can’t even begin to imagine how unbearable it was for Claudette Baldacchino, who is a Labour councillor at Qrendi, when she read the news this morning,” Super One TV journalist Julia Farrugia said about her colleague. As investigation are currently underway the families are “still in the dark” as to how to the accident happened.
Leader of the Opposition Alfred Sant and MLP secretary-general Jason Micallef visited the homes of the grieving families, as did the Minister of Education
Archbishop Mercieca also visited the families early in the morning to express his condolences.
mmuscat@mediatoday.com.mt
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