Sad end
LEON George Marshall was not as lucky as Renaldo Reynolds.
Both were washed away by flood waters in different sections of the Jamaican capital, Kingston. However, while Reynolds, 12, was saved by a brave Tremayne Brown who jumped into the raging waters last Friday, there was no one to save the 79-year-old Marshall when he was washed away in the Sandy Gully during a heavy downpour Thursday.
His body was found yesterday morning.
According to the constabulary’s Corporate Communication Unit, Marshall was swept away in the gully adjacent to his home off Manning’s Hill Road in Kingston about 4:00 pm.
The elderly man was reportedly removing tree branches from the gully when a sudden rush of water swept him away.
Marshall’s grief-stricken daughter Carol Marshall, speaking to the Jamaica Observer at the family’s humble home in the Cassava Piece community, said the tree branches were cut by Jamaica Public Service personnel and that her father was in the process of removing the branches from the gully when tragedy struck.
Carol, who was not at home at the time of the tragedy, said if she was at home her father would not have gone in the gully.
“He is a stubborn person. Only me could a talk to him. If I was at home he would not go down there, and if I was here I would have taken him out,” Carol said, adding that she was downtown Kingston when she received a telephone call that her father had been washed away.
“Them call and say if mi hear what happened, so mi say no. ‘Dem say your father wash weh gone in the gully ennuh. Den somebody call back and say them hear say them hold him and him deh a public (Kingston Public Hospital). Mi go a public twice and them say him no deh deh. Mi go a University Hospital of the West Indies and them say he’s not there,” she explained.
Carol said she went to the Constant Spring Police Station where she made a report on Thursday, but said the police did not send a team to assist with the search at the time. So she, along with family members and residents, began searching for the elderly man.
Without any success, Carol, residents and relatives went back yesterday to search for Marshall. “We start walk from here (Cassava Piece) go straight down to Pembroke Hall gully where we saw some men looking iron (scrap metal). We asked them if them no see nobody in the gully and them say yes, them just pass an old man down there in the gully. When we went down there, a him,” Carol said, her voice quaken.
Apparently, the men who were in search of scrap metal didn’t see it fit to call the police when they saw the body lying in the gully on Ken Hill Drive.
Little did Carol know that Wednesday would have been the last time she saw her father.
“Wednesday mi say, ‘Daddy mi a go a town,’ because mi never leave out and no tell him say me a go weh, and when me come back mi always make him know say mi come back. If mi come back and no tell him, him would a cuss me. We had a good relationship, even though him stubborn, and mi no pay him no mine. Mi gone bout mi business, sometime him wah beat mi even though mi a big woman. Everything mi get a road mi give him,” the woman said as tears flowed down her cheeks.
Last Friday, 12-year-old Renaldo Reynolds was rescued from angry flood waters on Collie Smith Drive. Renaldo, otherwise known as “Didda”, was on his way home from Jones Town Primary School during heavy rain when he was encouraged by a group of older boys, in the vicinity of Seventh Street, to jump into the flooded gully. He did, but while attempting to climb out of the gully he slipped and was swept away by raging flood waters.
Brown, a labourer, was at the Boys’ Town Community Centre when he heard residents screaming for help. On learning that a child was being carried away in the gully, without thinking twice, he jumped into the raging water and held on to young Renaldo.
They were both swept away by the flood waters but Brown, who clutched Renaldo, managed to hold on to the branch of a tree that prevented them from being carried further away. They were eventually rescued from the gully.