SEAFORD TOWN, Westmoreland — A claim that 12-year-old Deanna Solomon fell under the Montego Bay Metro bus that crushed her to death after being pushed by fellow students in a scramble to board the vehicle increased the pain her family has been feeling since the tragedy on Wednesday.

“Right now all of us break down,” Deanna’s mother, Antonette Shaw, told the
Jamaica Observer on Thursday, adding that their house “doesn’t feel like a home”.

“The children say she was pushed… that they were rushing to go into the bus, that’s how she end up under the bus and the bus drive with her under it,” added a tearful Shaw who also revealed that Deanna, her fifth child, did not want to go to school Wednesday morning.

“She never want to wake up to go to school, and when she finally get ready, she come and hug me in the bed and kiss me and say ‘Mommy later; yuh coming to [Montego] Bay?’ Shaw related.

“It’s because she have exams I said ‘Go on, just be careful’,” the mother explained.

Shaw said later that day she left her home in Bridgewater community and was on her way to Montego Bay when she was contacted by Irwin High School administrators who told that her daughter had been injured.

“I just started crying. I had to come off the bus and call a drive and it took me straight up by the hospital,” she said, adding that when she got to the hospital she was able to communicate with her daughter, despite her condition.

“She grabbed on to me and I said, ‘Deanna, mi come’ and she say, ‘Yes, I want some water’,” the mother related.

That was the final interaction she had with her child.

“We were praying to God that she would pull through, but when I go in there and I said, ‘Doctor, how is it?’ The doctor said, ‘Honestly, keep your fingers crossed that nothing is wrong with the brain. But if something is wrong with the brain, then you know how it goes’,” Shaw said.

Amid her grief Shaw lauded the hospital staff for the work they did trying to keep her daughter alive.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Shaw lamented the untimely demise of her daughter who, she said, was doing very well in school and had wanted to become a judge.

“She was a brilliant girl. She got the top girl for PEP (Primary Exit Profile) at Retrieve Primary,” Shaw said, adding that Deanna’s death has hit her school community hard.

“Right now her teacher said she doesn’t know how she going to handle it,” Shaw told the
Observer.