Jerk vendor’s death disrupts Father’s Day celebration

Rio Grande Valley, Portland

Fifty-nine year-old Gilbert ‘Honest John’ Hall just missed out on what would have been a surprise Father’s Day celebration after a car he was driving plunged over a precipice and landed in a ravine in the Rio Grande Valley of east Portland, Sunday morning.

Hall’s death shattered family members at Land Settlement in east Portland, who were eagerly awaiting his return to the family home but who instead received a phone call informing them of his demise shortly after 8 a.m.

Shocked by what she had been told and still in disbelief, Marcia Hall, wife of the deceased, quickly instructed her daughter, Terri-Ann Hall, to visit the scene of the accident to verify whether there was any truth to the dreadful phone call.

Terri-Ann, who told The Gleaner that she had been planning the perfect surprise Father’s Day celebration for her dad, said she had doubted what she was hearing and was determined to prove that her father was still alive and that it was all a big mistake.

“I saw him Saturday morning, but I had long planned to surprise him, and I know that he would be pleased,” she said. “We get along very well, but like every family, there were some challenges. So everything was planned for today, June 18, but sometime at about 8 a.m. I received a phone call that there was a car accident and that he was killed. But mi never believe because mi a say ‘Dis caan be happening, not today nor ever’. So I decided to visit the scene of the acciden,t and then I discovered that he died as a result of the crash.”

Last seen at wake

Honest John, who reportedly left home on Saturday to ply his trade of selling jerk pork, was last seen at a wake at Ginger House in the upper Rio Grande Valley. But somewhere between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Sunday, a white Toyota Corolla station wagon was spotted at the bottom of a ravine in the vicinity of Rivers View, near Dam Bridge.

Come daylight, a search party managed to locate the mangled vehicle, which was upside down, under a big tree, surrounded by shrubbery and thick vegetation, with the lifeless body of Honest John protruding through a window.

The scene of Sunday’s accident lies less than 600 metres from the crash site at Dam Bridge, which claimed the lives of 14 people including a 10-year-old boy, during a horrific truck accident on the night of December 19, 2008.

Police sources have theorised that Honest John may have fallen asleep while driving, which resulted in the vehicle running off the main road and over a precipice, plunging more than 200 feet into a ravine before coming to a virtual stop.