Derek Achong

De­feat­ed St Joseph by-elec­tion can­di­date Ian Al­leyne es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury on Wednes­day night af­ter he was in­volved in a car crash in Port-of-Spain in which his SUV turned over on its side.There were sev­er­al con­flict­ing re­ports over the ac­ci­dent yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, with po­lice sources, Al­leyne's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cial and Al­leyne him­self all giv­ing vary­ing ac­counts of the events.

What was con­sis­tant in all three ver­sions was that Al­leyne was not over T&T's le­gal al­co­hol lim­it of 35 mi­cro­grammes of al­co­hol for every 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath.When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Al­leyne de­nied con­sum­ing al­co­hol be­fore the ac­ci­dent and said he was re­turn­ing from a meet­ing at the time."I did not have any al­co­hol in my sys­tem. The re­sult of the test was ze­ro," Al­leyne claimed.Al­leyne al­so took is­sue with sev­er­al me­dia re­ports yes­ter­day which stat­ed he was in­tox­i­cat­ed at the time of the ac­ci­dent.

"They are try­ing any­thing to tar­nish my name. I don't know what I do them," Al­leyne said. He told the T&T Guardian he would usu­al­ly have a dri­ver but de­cid­ed to dri­ve him­self around on Wednes­day night."It is rare when I dri­ve my­self but some­times I need my pri­va­cy," Al­leyne said.When ques­tioned if he was at fault in the ac­ci­dent, Al­leyne said no."I didn't break no ma­jor road. I know the area very well, I pass there every oth­er night," Al­leyne said.

He al­so com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to the scene and said they were very cour­te­ous and help­ful.Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 11.40 pm Al­leyne was dri­ving his Toy­ota Fron­tun­ner SUV south along Stone Street when he col­lid­ed with a Volk­swa­gen Golf dri­ven by Este Calder, who was dri­ving west along Duke Street.The front of Al­leyne's ve­hi­cle was dam­aged and it turned over on­to the dri­ver's side while al­most the en­tire front of Calder's car was dam­aged.

Al­leyne and Calder es­caped un­scathed while Calder's front seat pas­sen­ger, who was iden­ti­fied as Cory Bon­nett, suf­fered mi­nor in­juries.Po­lice sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that field so­bri­ety breathal­yser tests were ad­min­is­tered to Al­leyne and Calder, who were both found to be un­der the le­gal al­co­hol lim­it. They were then ques­tioned by po­lice and al­lowed to leave the scene with their wrecked ve­hi­cles.

A source close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said Al­leyne and his lawyers vis­it­ed the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day to speak with in­ves­ti­ga­tors but said Al­leyne did not give a state­ment. A press re­lease sent yes­ter­day morn­ing by Com­plete Im­age Lim­it­ed, who han­dled some of Al­leyne's pub­lic re­la­tions dur­ing his elec­tion cam­paign, con­tained in­for­ma­tion on the cir­cum­stances of the ac­ci­dent which were con­trary to po­lice re­ports.

"Mr Al­leyne was dri­ving his mo­tor ve­hi­cle when it was sud­den­ly hit from be­hind, re­sult­ing in his mo­tor ve­hi­cle flip­ping," Pri­or Be­har­ry, the com­pa­ny's me­dia con­sul­tant, said in the re­lease.In the re­lease, Be­har­ry "cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly" de­nied in­ter­net ru­mours be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day which claimed there were two Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in Al­leyne's ve­hi­cle at the time of the crash. This fact was con­firmed by both the po­lice and Al­leyne. PC Hosten is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.