YESTERDAY marked the beginning of a dark journey for the Mattis family who reside on Venita Close in the community of South Boro, St Catherine.

Up until two Saturdays ago, the family chatted and laughed as one big happy unit as they dined away on the sumptuous dinner their teenage daughter and “wash belly” Kerriann, had prepared.

But Kerrian Mattis did not live to cook the usual Saturday dinner her family had grown accustomed to, ever since she began experimenting in the kitchen in her early teens.

She, along with three friends died in a car crash near the Portmore Causeway in the wee hours of Saturday morning while on their way to their Portmore homes following a night out at the Ecstatic Night Club in New Kingston.

“She did everything around here, all the cooking and tidying up,” explained Kerrian’s father, Ronald Mattis.

Father Mattis became the spokesman for the family, with the other members too distraught to speak.

“But look,” he said, pointing at groceries he picked up the night before, “the groceries are still in the bag because that (unpacking) is Kerrian’s job, even that she does.”

Kerrian, 18, along with her friends 20-year-old Jodian Clarke, 24-year-old Seston Green and 21-year-old Nathaniel Lindman, died as the Nissan Sunny station wagon in which they were travelling made angry contact with a concrete utility pole along the Causeway near the Port Henderson turn.

Up to Sunday Observer press time, it was unclear who was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident.

Oniel “Blacka” Henry, 26, who might have been the driver, was still battling for life at the Spanish Town Hospital.

So bad were Kerrian’s and Clarke’s injuries, they died on the spot. The two men, the police said, died at the Spanish Town Hospital.

Speeding was theorised to be the cause of the accident.

“It’s obvious they were travelling at an excessive speed and as far as to what we have learnt so far, the car was racing with others but as to how many there were, we are not sure,” said a cop stationed at the Waterford Police Station, it’s yard now the storage space for the crumpled wreck of the vehicle.

Whatever the cause of the accident, however, one simple fact remains – those left behind are deeply hurt. Except for Lindnam, the others all lived in South Boro. And, they were best friends.

“So it’s a big blow, because they all moved together and you would always see Kerrian and Jodian together, we knew them all” explained Mattis.

Four houses away, a pall of gloom hung over the house belonging to Clarke’s parents.

For Charmaine Reid, her daughter was her joy. She was the eldest of her six children and a good role model for four younger siblings.

“She was obedient and even at her age she would still ask for my permission to go out, even last night,” she said, referring to Saturday night.

“Last night she got a phone call following which she asked my permission to go with her friends, and I told her ‘yes’ and even reminded her to be careful on the road and not forget that she had work on Saturday,” she recalled.

She said she was apparently the last to hear the sad news which spread like wildfire throughout the community only minutes after it happened.

“No one apparently knew how to break the news to me, even my other (teenager) refused the job,” she explained.

Nearby on Melva Mews, Henry and Monica Green gave a horrifying description of what they had seen at the Spanish Town Hospital where they had gone to identify their son’s body.

“It seemed like Seston got a head injury, his left hand was broken, he had a cut to his side and blood was draining from the head,” related the mother.

“It looked bad,” added the father, referring to his son’s body.

The deceased, they said, was the breadwinner of the house. He was the third of their seven children.

“I don’t have to ask him for nothing, even recently he started a small DVD rental business to help us out,” she explained, noting that neither her, nor her husband had a job.