THE last thing on Sophia Williams’ mind Monday morning when she left her Swallowfield, St Andrew, home was that her 16-year-old son, Zachery “Pappie” Williams, would go off with friends to a river in another parish where he would drown.

Williams said when her younger son called around 5:30 pm with the devastating news that her eldest child had drowned at Caymanas River in St Catherine, she remembers screaming and breaking down.

“I screamed and my boss asked me what the problem was. When I told her, she immediately gave me permission to leave for the day. I don’t work far from where I live. When I left, I broke down and screamed. I also fell to the ground,” Williams told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday.

“My boyfriend tried to console me. He said, ‘Babes, remember your other kids need you’. He said that because he knows I have high blood pressure. From there, my son’s godmother came and started to look for a car to take me to the Spanish Town Hospital where Zachery was. I told his sister what happened and she started to scream and tremble. She also had an anxiety attack and had to go to the doctor,” the mother shared.

As far as Williams is concerned, nobody gave Zachery permission to visit the river and stated that he had been persuaded by friends to make the trip.

She shared that the tragedy has left her torn, especially whenever she recalls how she tried in futility to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him, but he showed no sign of life.

“By the time I got to the Spanish Town Hospital, I saw my baby on a stretcher under a white sheet. I held his nose and was blowing in his mouth and was telling him to get up. I am trying to cope. He is my first son, out of six children.

“My younger son saw his brother take his last breath. I know that he is trying to be strong, but mentally him mash up. I told him that it is okay to scream and cry and just let it out, because the devil took one of my sons and I will not allow him to take any more,” Sophia told the Observer.

What bothers Williams, however, is that an adult drove a group of children from St Andrew to St Catherine without ensuring there was parental consent.

“The person who drove the car, I was told is an adult. I want to belt out on him because I want to ask him why he carried my baby to the river. I never gave permission to carry him anywhere. He jumped in the car and left. All I can say to all the mothers and the fathers out there [is] keep your children under your wings. I was told that when he dived, he hit his head and that made him unconscious. Two men at the river tried to revive my son. I wish I could see them in person to tell them thanks because they did their best. It was just too late.

“I got a glimpse of a video that showed how hard they tried. I heard somebody in the background saying, ‘You are going to make it, youth. You are strong.’ He was doing track and field at Papine High School. The principal called me on Tuesday to say that little boy is not a problem child. Recently he said, ‘Mommy, when mi go a foreign a Benz mi ago drive and I am going to make sure you are alright. He didn’t get to fulfil his promise. If he was alive, he would make it happen.”

A distraught female cousin of Zachery said she “will miss him so much” and shared that he was really looking forward to his 17th birthday on August 6, when Jamaica celebrates Independence Day.

“His death has done something to me. Things will never be the same again. He and I were talking about pool and river and he was telling me how he almost drowned in the National Stadium pool and how he learned to swim after that. I can’t believe that was the last conversation I was having with him,” she said.

One man shared that Zachery had volunteered to wash his motor vehicle and before he could even finish, friends came and enticed with the offer to go to the river.

“It was my car the juvenile was washing. When I came back, half of the car had soap on it. If you ask around in the community, everybody loved him. He is a willing young man.”

Zemel Bennett, another of Zachery’s cousins, and other members of the family have not been able to sleep or eat since the tragedy.

One male resident summed up the situation and concluded, “This is a case where the good died young.”