‘I feel it every day’
THE pain Petchrina Johnson felt on the night of Saturday, August 13, 2022 was still evident in her voice last Friday.
Johnson told the Jamaica Observer that she was at home in Lluidas Vale, St Catherine, when she heard her name being called outside about 9:30.
Not expecting anyone, she was afraid to go outside. Eventually, she mustered up the courage, left her room, and went outside where she was greeted by two women with devastating news.
“They said somebody overseas would like to speak with somebody from the family,” Johnson recalled.
“What is it?” she asked, anxiously.
“It is not a good news,” one of the women responded.
Soon after, she learned that her uncle, Dopson Wynter, had died in an accident in the United States. Wynter was among a group of farm workers who left Jamaica on August 10 to work on an apple farm in New York.
It was reported that Wynter was travelling along the Route 9 Highway with a co-worker, Henry Griffith, when the driver of a SUV slammed into their vehicle. Wynter died on the spot. Griffith has been hospitalised since.
Wynter lived in Pennington District, Lluidas Vale. He had four daughters, one of whom was celebrating her birthday the day he died.
He was very active in the farm work programme years ago but had stopped for a while, resuming only recently.
The family explained to the Sunday Observer that contrary to what was reported by other local media, Wynter was not married.
The family is also currently in discussion with the respective authorities, including the Ministry of Labour and Wynter’s overseas employer.
Johnson told the Sunday Observer that she shared a very close relationship with her uncle.
“Whenever we meet he always has a smile on his face. He was a very kind, jovial person and he was quiet. He never talked much but he was a people person. Even in the community, everyone was shocked when they heard of his passing. We have sleepless nights. Sometimes I just don’t like to talk about it because it hurts so much,” Johnson said as her voice cracked.
“I almost faint when I heard that my uncle passed away. I couldn’t manage so I just gave them my aunt’s number in order for them to speak with her. I couldn’t give mom that news because her husband was sick, she was so down, and her pressure was high,” she related.
The following morning, Johnson told her mother, Mary Gordon-Mills, that Wynter had been involved in an accident. Fearing that that she wouldn’t respond well, the family also told her he was in the hospital.
It was not until the following day that Gordon-Mills found out. She told the Sunday Observer that she tries her best not to remember the loss.
“My gentle, quiet brother. He was so humble. He was so nice and gentle. He would say ‘Sister Mary, I okay.’ I am trying to get over it. I never want to remember it. To know that my brother meet a tragic death in America, I feel it every day. But, God knows everything,” she said.
“He was the last little baby brother to us. Your last brother, you always have to love him and care for him, and [yet] he just passed off like that. Him just gone like that,” Gordon-Mills said.
The heartbreak and disbelief extend to Wynter’s colleagues who are still on the farm work programme in the US. They have since organised a nine night for him.
One of the workers, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Observer that just 10 minutes before the accident he had given Wynter, who he called Indian, a beer.
The man recalled that after returning from their farm that Saturday evening, they were sitting and having drinks when another worker suggested that they go to another farm and get calalloo. Wynter went, and on their way back the accident occurred about 7:45 pm.
“I gave him a beer and before him even walk away to go on the golf cart, him give me a Heineken. So, I was sitting outside. When I hear the impact and hear a lady scream out, my brethren turn to me and say ‘Yow, somebody dead, enuh.’ We didn’t know it was Indian. A next friend said ‘Mek wi go look’ and I said ‘No’, because this a nuh Jamaica where you can just run go anywhere,” the man recalled emotionally.
However, an ambulance’s siren made them realise that the crash was more serious than they had thought.
“When wi go up there, mi a tell yuh, mi see the man. Mi see Indian on the corner of the road and mi see Henry in the middle of the road,” he recalled, noting that he picked up Wynter’s cellphone off the ground.
Shortly after, he said the phone began ringing, but he didn’t answer as he thought the liaison officer was the most suitable person to deliver the news to whoever was calling.
“And then mi see like paramedics a put on Indian on a stretcher and a push down a tube in him mouth, like dem a try fi bring him back. Eyewater drop outta mi eye. To know that it’s about 10 minutes ago I give the man a beer, and to come see the man like that. When the rest a man dem come, everybody start cry because Indian is a man that is well respected. He is highly respected on the farm. It was a blow to us. It was unexpected,” he related.
“He died on the spot and Griffith is in the hospital now on life machine. We cannot see him; just our government representative and his daughter.”
The man said he was even more heartbroken as he knew that it was Wynter’s daughter’s birthday.
“He sent money to his daughter the Friday and told me her birthday was the Saturday. He died the Saturday. I read online where people are saying it was his wife’s birthday, and I don’t understand that. Somebody just heard something and put it out. It actually was his daughter’s birthday,” the farm worker said.
He recalled that whenever Wynter travelled to Kingston he would stop by his house and check on him.
“So, he is a person that I know up here and down there; it’s not like a person that I meet once a year,” he told the Sunday Observer.
The distraught man also said that Wynter was the glue that held the team of them together.
“Once it touch August to September, if ministry call him first out of the batch of us, he is a person who will call the rest of us and inform us. Him woulda say ‘Mi get call, so you can look out for a call.’ Or he would ask ministry who else on the list so he can call and inform them once he has their number.”