THE body of 24-year-old Natanya Irving, clutching her five-month-old baby boy to her breast, was recovered yesterday from the murky waters that filled a deep ravine in Myersville, St Elizabeth. Rescuers were up to late afternoon still trying to recover Irving's five-year-old daughter, Tashma Parchment.

They were also searching for the bodies of Larry Stewart, 41, and Jermaine Spooner, 22, the Good Samaritans whose attempt to help a young family in distress appears to have brought them death Saturday night.

The mangled wreck of the car in which the bodies of Natanya Irving and her five-month-old baby boy were found yesterday. Three other bodies have still not yet been recovered. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)

The men were being hailed as heroes in the little town of Myersville yesterday, but family and friends said that they would forego all that if there was a miracle and they are found alive.

"I have six children with him," said Stewart's common-law wife, Desreen Chaplain. They shared a 22-year relationship.
"No father, no help," Chaplain lamented. "A house without a father is no home. He was kind and loving and a good father to his children. He was also hard working."

The five victims of the Myersville disaster are, so far, the only reported deaths directly related to Hurricane Emily that passed off Jamaica's south coast on Saturday, sparing the island the brunt of its winds but dousing Jamaica with up to eight inches of rain that caused severe flooding in several areas.

The steep precipice from which the car plunged.

In some ways, these deaths were a freakish occurrence during a storm that had earlier threatened to give Jamaica a severe, and perhaps devastating, whack.

According to Lennox Irving, 55, his daughter, Natanya, and her two children lived in Branswick, St Elizabeth, with Natanya's mother.
But on Saturday evening, with Emily heading west along Jamaica's south coast, Natanya decided to go to Santa Cruz to wait out the storm with her children's father. It was a decision that triggered the events that led to tragedy.

"Perhaps if she had stayed with her mother at Branswick she and her children would perhaps still be alive," Lennox Irving said yesterday.
According to witnesses, Natanya and her children were travelling by car along the Myersville main road when the vehicle developed problems.

Lennox Irving holding the shoes of his five-month-old grandson, Dantoy Elliot, whose body was recovered from the car that plunged into a water-filled ravine in St Elizabeth on Saturday.

It was not clear up to last night who was driving the vehicle, but according to people in the area, he left the car to seek help. Natanya and the children stayed in the vehicle.

Stewart and Spooner were among the people who responded to the call for assistance. This was about seven o'clock. The rain had begun to pound western Jamaica.

Spooner, instead of the original driver, got behind the steering wheel, while others, including Stewart, attempted to push the car out of the rising water.

But no sooner than the operation had begun, Myersville residents said yesterday, than a heavy gush of water propelled the car over a precipice into a ravine below, taking with it the four occupants - the mother, her two children and Spooner. Stewart was also washed over the precipice.

According to Sylburn Hanson, his long-time friend, Stewart, was reported to have earlier helped two other men who were being dragged away by heavy gushes of water before himself being knocked over by a boulder.
"I feel very bad," said Hanson.

A section of the large crowd that turned up to help pull the ill-fated car from the muddy waters. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Annel Spooner, the brother of Jermaine, hoped for a miracle yesterday, refusing to accept what appeared to be the inevitable as he peered into the muddy waters of the ravine below.
"I not feeling so wonderful," he said.
Lennox Irving had no such hope.

He said: "To be truthful, I don't feel good and I don't feel too bad. Mi try to keep the faith and hoping that them will find the (body of the) other little one soon."

As he spoke, he held fast to his grandson's slippers. The shoes were recovered from the water.

williamp@jamaicaobserver.com

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