Allison Spratt experienced jitters on Friday afternoon when she received reports that a body had been found in the Wag Water River in St Mary, more than 24 hours after her 19-year-old daughter Chrisan Steele, and Omar Skyers, an employee of Lasco, were washed away when heavy rain sent the river in spate.

However, up to press time on Friday, the report could not be confirmed by official sources, causing increased anxiety among the relatives of both Steele and Skyers, who had all travelled from lower Waltham Park Road and Seaview Gardens in St Andrew hoping to find their loved ones who are believed to have drowned.

A search team comprising family members and friends spent many hours on Friday scoping miles of the river trying to locate the two, but had no luck. Their hopes increased on numerous occasions when they saw objects appearing to be of human form. However, those hopes were quickly dashed after realising that what they spotted were inanimate objects.

Chrisandra Steele, a younger sibling of the missing woman, said she witnessed her sister being knocked off a rock by a strong gush of water along with debris before she was washed downstream.

“We were in the water, but some black suppen did a pitch on my skin. I came out of the water and washed them off my skin. I was ready to go and I said, ‘Chrisan, come nuh, mi ready.’ I said it about three times. I told her my head was hurting me. She said she nah come, so I just leave her. She sat down on a rock. Everybody was sitting on a rock,” Chrisandra related.

“By the time mi look, a pure bamboo bush with rubbish start come down. She freeze on the rock. The water start run hard and then a big wave come lick her off. Her head was going up and down until I could see her no more. Mi did a run and a bawl out her name. I was about to go in the water for her but a lady who live near, and her husband, came with a rope. She hold on to me and took me to the police station. She said I can’t go down to the river. She said if mi go in deh mi a go drown,” Chrisandra shared.

“Even when Chrisan head come up likkle, she never seh help nor nothing,” she added.

She told the Jamaica Observer that Skyers, who was on the rock as well, is her sister’s friend.

“After my sister go down, it look like a wave lick him off a the rock that he was sitting on,” she said, adding that she didn’t see how Skyers ended up in the water as it was at that time that the woman had prevented her from jumping into the raging river in an attempt to save her sister, despite her inability to swim.

The missing woman’s mother, meanwhile, appeared to be distraught. She spent most of the journey from St Andrew to St Mary in silence, her face wrenched in pain.

As she sat on a sidewalk above the river, she told the Observer that someone who had a lot of knowledge about what the possible outcome could be told her that the body of her daughter and her friend could very well end up in the sea.

She said people told her that it might not be until they float to the top of the sea in the next couple of days that they will be found.

However, she still held on to hope that their bodies had lodged somewhere along the course of the river and had not gone all the way to the sea.

One woman, who lives close to the spot from where the two were swept away, said that a search team should have been activated within the first few hours after the incident occurred, instead of the following day. She expressed sadness that Chrisan’s two-year-old son most likely will not grow up knowing his mother and will have to learn at a later stage in life that his mother died from drowning.

“It really sad that the little boy father gone foreign Wednesday and him mother dead Thursday. You see Wag Water River, that water is not a nice water when it come down. You have Ginger River, Wag Water River, and Palm River, and there is also a dam. When the dam leggo, a nuh nothing normal. Water high and powerful,” the woman said.

The search will continue on Saturday.

Chrisan Steele, who was swept away in the Wag Water River during heavy rain on Thursday afternoon.

Omar Skyers was also swept away in the Wag Water River during heavy rain on Thursday afternoon.

Shalomeyam Wallen (left) and Sheridan Simmonds join the search for their relative Chrisan Steele, and Omar Skyers on Friday. Both were washed away in the Wag Water River in St Mary during heavy rain on Thursday. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Christopher Steele holds his head on the banks of the Wag Water River in St Mary on Friday while searching for his daughter, Chrisan, and her friend Omar Skyers, who were both swept away in the swolen river during heavy rain on Thursday.