THERE were no tears in Doreen Tulloch’s eyes but the pain and grief of facing the reality that she would never see her daughter alive again was etched in the grooves of her face.

Tulloch’s 21-year-old daughter, Tashika McKenzie, was one of six persons who died tragically in a collision along the Bushy Park leg of Highway 2000 on Monday.

“She mash up, half of her body bruise off, she mash up bad,” said Tulloch, who had just arrived home from the Spanish Town Hospital morgue where she had gone to identify her daughter’s body yesterday.

The other dead persons have been identified as 52-year-old Beverly Johnson, Kemar Johnson, 17, Casia Barrett, a man known only as ‘Willy’, and Robert Taylor.

McKenzie is the third of Tulloch’s nine children, all of whom were born in the rustic district of Cudjoe’s Hill in St Catherine.

Yesterday, the entire district was in grief over McKenzie’s untimely demise. A group of red-eyed women and children sat under the shade of a tree and discussed the incident in hushed tones.

One woman was visibly upset and accused the driver of the car, identified as Clement Johnson, of recklessness.

The seven were returning from the funeral of a relative in Trelawny when the Toyota Corolla they were travelling in was smacked by another vehicle before slamming into a utility pole and bursting in two, killing all but Johnson, who has since been hospitalised.

Three others were injured in the accident which occurred about 300 metres from the Vineyard toll plaza.

The woman who accused the driver of recklessness claimed that there was a quarrel after the funeral, where the driver of the ill-fated car was accused of ‘not driving good’, and that some did not want him to drive them back home.

In the nearby Wynters Pen, where McKenzie and Taylor resided, residents had only good things to say about McKenzie. A woman who worked in a shop beside a bar where McKenzie worked as a bartender described her as a generous individual. “She was kind and was always trying,” the woman said sadly.

A young woman who was purchasing cigarettes at the shop expressed her sorrow at the passing of the two. “Them was mi friend, them dead hard still,” she said.

While relatives of McKenzie and Taylor could be found, the same could not be said for the other four deceased, all of whom lived at 48 Portmore Lane in Portmore, St Catherine.

When the Observer visited the home, the sombre look of their neighbours told a grisly tale. The white, one-storey house which Beverley Johnson and her relatives once occupied was locked up and stood as a silent reminder of the tragedy that claimed six lives and injured four others.

“All of them who lived over there died in a crash,” said a youngster, as he pointed to the house.

A woman described the four as quiet neighbours, who would be sorely missed.

“Them a some cool people who nuh trouble nobody and we want know why all of them haffi drop out one time like that,” the woman said, as she shook her head slowly.