HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Michelle Losongco was having what she called a “leisure day” with her husband. They were on their way to meet a friend for coffee Thursday morning, Feb. 22, when they were involved in a four-car collision on Route 1 on a stretch of road between Adelup and Asan known as Dead Man’s Curve.
Losongco, who sat in the passenger seat, told The Guam Daily Post her husband was driving the speed limit in the left northbound lane when a Dodge Ram, possibly going 70 mph, Losongco said, came up from behind the couple’s car and switched into their lane.
“I had just seen him literally just come up beside us and just swoop over into our lane. … He hit the front fender, the right front fender, pushed us into the oncoming traffic coming south,” Losongco recalled.
Then, the Dodge Ram, Losongco believed, collided with a white truck head-on before riding “down the whole side” of the white truck. Losongco then saw the Dodge Ram continue to drive. However, the damage stopped the driver from continuing.
“His rotor from the tire had drug all the way up the street and then finally his radiator fluid, I guess, leaked completely out and that’s when he made it over the side of the road,” said Losongco. She added that she did not see what exactly happened to the fourth car involved in the collision but believed it was traveling behind the white truck.
The collision prompted a response from the Guam Fire Department and Guam Police Department. Losongco said that two officers in a patrol car witnessed the collision.
“Luckily enough, before he hit us, there was a police officer. There was two of them in one vehicle that was ahead of the white truck. And then when he looked up in his rearview mirror, he’s seen him hit the white truck. … So he turned around, and he was one of our witnesses,” Losongco recalled.
‘Could have been a lot worse’
Considering the Dead Man’s Curve area is known to be an area where traffic crashes often occur, Losongco felt the four-car collision “could have been a lot worse.”
“I just had whiplash a little bit. … The guy in the white truck, … he just had some minor scratches,” said Losongco, who sent photos of damage to her vehicle, which included a dent near the right headlight.
Following the crash, GPD confirmed that one person was taken to the hospital with nonfatal injuries. Losongco confirmed the male driver of the Dodge Ram was hospitalized after she saw him “bleeding just a tiny bit on his forehead.”
As of press time, Wednesday, the Post could not confirm whether GPD was still investigating the traffic crash or the status of the hospitalized individual’s condition.
Safety
On Tuesday, Department of Public Works Director Vincent Arriola said at an Islandwide Beautification Task Force meeting that the department would be installing “candlestick stanchions” in the middle lane of Dead Man’s Curve to slow down the speed of traffic.
Losongco thought DPW’s efforts would help and suggested other ways to prevent more accidents on Dead Man’s Curve in the future.
“Maybe more policemen doing radar down there to kind of deter them … since that is such a long stretch, and maybe if there was a guard rail in between those lanes,” said Losongco, who relocated to Guam with her husband about four years ago from Tennessee.
Overall, Losongco thought the community should slow down.
“I think we all need to take time, just slow down because we all want to get home. … But you can’t if you’re not going to make it home to your family and loved ones. … There’s no real need to go that fast.”
Crashes
In the past year, several people have been hospitalized and some have died from traffic crashes on Dead Man’s Curve.
Before the four-car collision Thursday, two men, Mark Suda Jr., 40, and Repingeni Santos, 45, died Oct. 29, 2023, after a sedan collided with a dump truck. A third individual was hospitalized and was last known to be in critical condition, Post files state.
GPD, through an investigation, determined this was one of several of the 29 fatal crashes last year that were caused by “excessive speed.”
At 11:12 p.m. on July 16, 2023, the Guam Fire Department responded to a two-car collision on Dead Man’s Curve, which resulted in five of eight occupants being hospitalized, Post files state.
At 9:44 a.m. on May 22, 2023, a three-car crash resulted in three people being hospitalized with nonfatal injuries, Post files state.
