A family is mourning the deaths of two young girls who tragically lost their lives during a birthday celebration at Enchanter Creek on the Linden Highway on Sunday.
Cousins Anika La Rose, 10, and Joylyn Jack, 11, were best friends and did everything together.
“The two of them do everything together; they were together all the time, they were close,” Osrick Jack, Joylyn’s father, told the News Room.
He mentioned that both girls knew how to swim. The family remains baffled about what went wrong on Sunday.
“Since it happened, I haven’t had a meal. Every time I go to eat, I vomit. Every single time I try to sleep, the whole incident just plays back in my mind. It is affecting everybody,” Osrick said.
Osrick explained that Anika had repeatedly asked him to take her to the creek for her birthday, so they decided to make the trip.
“She kept asking me to take her, but I was working, so I asked for the day off to take her.”
He noted that Anika was the only child of her parents, while Joylyn was his eldest and only daughter. Anika’s mother works in the interior, so Anika was staying with her grandmother.
“Her grandmother keeps having blackouts,” Osrick stated.
Osrick explained that he had gone to use the bathroom while his son and the two girls were swimming in the creek.
“I was watching them all the time. As soon as I left, I told them not to go far. When I returned, I saw the boy alone and asked him where the girls were. He said he didn’t know,” the grieving father recalled.
Osrick further questioned his son about the girls’ whereabouts, and the young boy suggested they might have gone to the bathroom. Osrick went to the washroom, and when they weren’t there, he began searching everywhere for them.
Minutes later, his daughter’s body was found, and he immediately called an ambulance. Realizing that the ambulance was not coming, he took matters into his own hands.
“I ended up carrying her in my vehicle, and someone told us that the Army Base had a health center, so we rushed there. When we arrived, there was no health center,” Osrick said.
He then rushed his daughter to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre.
“When we reached Diamond, the doctor said she had already died,” the father said.
While they were at the Army Base in Timehri, they received a call that Anika had been found, half an hour after Joylyn was discovered. A photograph posted on Facebook showed the two girls with a cake for Anika’s birthday, taken just five minutes before they went into the water.
Joylyn attended Stewartville Secondary, while Anika was a student at Stewartville Primary School.
Following the tragedy, the operator of Enchanter Creek issued a heartfelt apology during an emergency meeting at the Arthur Chung Conference Center on Monday.
The operator explained that typically, two staff members oversee the facility, but on the day of the drowning, only one staff member was present as the other had briefly left. He admitted that monitoring all areas can be challenging, especially with a large crowd.
In response to the tragedy, Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn announced that all water-based recreational facilities must implement trained lifeguards, clear signage, and designated children’s areas within a week.
I suspect AN ELECTRIC EEL.
Or, his son may have more to say.
Sad indeed, the lost children and everyone else’s day marred by this tragedy.