(Jamaica Observer) CASSANDRA Brown, after having two daughters, was over the moon when she was told during a prenatal clinic visit that she was having a boy.
But that joy turned into sorrow 21 months later when her son, Neymar Facey, perished in a fire that left 14 children and 11 adults homeless on Bay Farm Road in Kingston, Tuesday evening.
Admitting that she had no intentions of having a fourth child, the 38-year-old mother said she was anticipating Neymar’s second birthday in October.
“If me did come and see him face mi wouldn’t feel so. If mi come see him alive mi would a walk way and hug him,” she said yesterday as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Facey.
Insisting that the baby was usually with her, she said shortly after she had given him a bath he had fallen asleep, so she asked her older daughter, now 18, to watch him while she went to a shop.
“Mi did plan fi walk wid him go down the road go buy weh mi a buy but you know when baby body cool dem drop asleep, so mi put him on his belly and turn the fan on him and tell mi big daughter to give an eye on him fi mi, please,” she explained.
But before she could return home, she said her daughter had come running.
“When mi go down the road and a come up mi see she, she say di baby burn up mi say why you a come to me when yuh fi try save him. My six-year-old was there, too,” said Brown, as she started crying again.
According to her, she was told that shortly after she had gone to the shop her grandnephew had entered the house and lit a piece of sponge under the bed.
“If mi baby did save and anything bun up it wouldn’t hurt me so; nobody nuh save mi baby. When mi try to run in the fire was so high and mi just drop a di gate,” she sobbed.
“He was playful, he was sensible bad. When mi lift him up him would a kiss me. Him is a baby but it come in like him old,” the distressed mother said.
Senior Deputy Superintendent Patrick Gooden, officer in charge of operations for the Kingston and St Andrew Division at the Jamaica Fire Brigade, told the Jamaica Observer that firefighters from Half-Way-Tree fire station initially responded to a call at 6:09 pm that a house was on fire. They were assisted by firefighters from the York Park and Trench Town fire stations.
Based on preliminary investigations, Gooden said the cause of the fire was a result of a child playing with matches.