…were on their way to wedding

Three persons with Guyanese roots were killed in a collision between their mini-van and a pick-up, which was heading the wrong way on a Georgia highway on Saturday. Media outlets reported that the driver of the pick-up, who was also killed, was suspected to have been drunk.

The New York Daily News reported that Cyril Millington, 59, of Queens, New York and five of his relatives were travelling from New York to Florida for a cousin’s wedding when the pickup slammed into their 2001 Mazda MPV. Millington, his sister Michelle Carryl, 41, and cousin Dwight Spencer, 19, both of Apopka, Florida, were killed in the fiery wreck just outside Savannah.

The truck driver, Michael Delph, 28, of Clemson, South Carolina, also died in the crash. His truck, a Chevrolet S-10, was littered with bottles of alcoholic beverages, media outlets reported, quoting law enforcement officials. News reports said that Delph was heading the wrong way on I-95, when he plowed head-on into a minivan, which Carryl was driving.

The Minivan

Carryl’s three children – a 15-year-old boy and girls, 9 and 13, were rushed to the Memorial University Medical Centre at Savannah with nonlife-threatening injuries. The horrific collision occurred about 6:30 am. “My father was a loving, caring man,” Millington’s 21-year-old daughter told the New York Daily News. “He did everything possible to help anyone who needed it. He didn’t deserve to die this way.”

“Alcohol is going to be a factor”, the news outlet quoted Georgia State trooper, Chris Cuddington as saying. “There were open containers inside the {pick-up truck}”. Millington’s sister in law called the accident senseless. “When people drink and drive, they leave kids without their father, wives without their husband”, the woman, who declined to give her name, told the Daily News.

Other media reports quoted Cuddington as stating that the six occupants of the minivan were wearing seat belts at the time of the accident while Delph was not wearing the safety device.

The crash shut down a roughly 10-mile stretch of the southbound interstate for much of Saturday morning as state troopers and Bryan County authorities picked through the mangled wreckage.

The Pickup

The Daily News report stated that Millington was an engineer and a father of two girls.

He lived in St. Albans with his wife after moving from Guyana decades ago. Relatives and friends described him as a devoted family man and faithful churchgoer, who went out of his way for others.

He was the eldest of 13 children while Carryl was the youngest. Spencer was an only child of their sister.