Over the course of just nine months, three young children under the age of five have been killed in separate traffic collisions across Saint Lucia, turning a quiet national conversation about road safety into an urgent public crisis. Rikki Samuel, Yvonne Jules, and Kervil Lawrence — all young students at the start of their lives — have had their lives cut short on the island’s roadways, spotlighting systemic gaps in traffic safety and the deadly risk that high-incident corridors pose to all road users.
The first of these devastating losses came on October 25, 2025, when four-year-old Rikki Samuel, a kindergarten student at Banse La Grace Combined School, was traveling with his father near the Hewanorra International Airport and Marine Base. The pair became caught up in a three-vehicle collision that left 11 people injured. Rikki did not survive his injuries. Following the crash, local police charged Clarence Vigier of Belle Vue, Vieux Fort, with causing death by dangerous driving in connection with the incident.
Just four months later, on February 24, four-year-old Yvonne Jules became the second young victim. Yvonne was traveling in a minibus that lost control off the roadway at Mc Diarmed (also called Majomel) in the Laborie district, before plunging over a steep cliff. Emergency responders who raced to the remote scene found that Yvonne and the two adult passengers traveling with her had suffered catastrophic trauma. All three were pronounced dead at the site of the crash.
The most recent fatal incident took place on July 22, when five-year-old Kervil Lawrence, a kindergarten student at Piaye Combined School, was traveling with three other people near Il Pirata in Vieux Fort. Their vehicle veered off the roadway and crashed into a large tree. While the other three occupants survived with non-fatal injuries, Kervil succumbed to his wounds shortly after the collision.
Beyond the raw tragedy of losing three young children, two of these deaths — Rikki’s and Kervil’s — have drawn renewed scrutiny to a particularly dangerous stretch of highway connecting the Il Pirata area to Hewanorra International Airport. These two child deaths are not isolated incidents on this corridor: back in January, 24-year-old Dayna Tobierre was killed after her vehicle left the road and crashed into a tree at nearby Sandy Beach. Just 10 days after Tobierre’s death, Viclann Joseph, a man in his early 20s, died in a high-impact head-on collision between his private car and a minibus at Il Pirata, which left several other passengers injured.
When combined with Rikki and Kervil’s deaths, that means four young people have been killed in separate crashes along this single high-risk stretch of road in just nine months.
These child deaths are just a small, devastating part of a much larger and worsening road safety crisis across the entire island. During the most recent official police press conference held earlier this month, Superintendent Troy Lamontagne, head of the island’s Road and Traffic Investigations unit, released updated fatality data showing that Saint Lucia had recorded 14 confirmed road deaths by the end of June. Kervil’s July crash pushed that grim toll to 15. Just days later, the number rose again to 16, after 32-year-old Andrez Forde, a resident of Marchand, Castries, was killed when his vehicle veered off the road and fell over a cliff in Au Pos, Anse La Raye.
Lamontagne characterized the current state of road safety on the island as a “serious” ongoing crisis. He also highlighted a striking demographic disparity among road fatality victims: men account for the overwhelming majority of people killed in traffic incidents across Saint Lucia, a trend that officials are still working to address alongside broader infrastructure and enforcement reforms.