SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – As Hurricane Dean raged outside, Avis Wilson and his wife Dawn Miller Wilson made plans for bed.

“She decide that for the night we would stay right here,” said Wilson, pointing to the settee just below the window in the small living room of their home at Phase Three of the Bellevue Housing Scheme at Southfield, close to Top Hill.

Wilson recalls going to make tea for himself and his wife at about 8:30 pm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his wife getting up to block leaky louvre blades with sheets of newspaper even as a gust of wind hoisted the curtain.

Then his world fell apart. “All mi hear is dis loud sound and den she bawl out ‘Jesus Christ something lick mi’…”

Wilson ran to his wife to find her collapsed, clutching her chest and covered in shards from two shattered panes of the window.

Miller Wilson, a 48-year-old teacher at the BB Coke High School in nearby Junction was in pain all night. She did not get to hospital until early Monday morning because of blocked roads caused by the storm and the inability to reach emergency telephone numbers.

She died as a result of internal bleeding, shortly after reaching hospital.

It was sometime later before a grieving Wilson and his neighbours identified the instrument of death. A large, broken piece from the box eve of a neighbour’s wrecked roof had flown in excess of 50 metres, through and over trees, to slam into the Wilson’s window and took his wife’s life.

All week neighbours, friends and acquaintances struggled to find words to console Wilson.

“Her number call,” was all one visitor could say.