Eyewitness recounts horrifying moments after St Mary boat tragedy

Last Saturday was meant to be a day of joy and celebration for a group of 25 young individuals from the Corporate Area who ventured to St Mary for a beach and river excursion. However, it tragically transformed into one of the most devastating days of their lives.

According to the organiser of the trip, Kim, the group was initially in high spirits upon reaching Strawberry Fields Together in Robin's Bay. Their enthusiasm was directed towards a river located about 15 minutes from the beach, prompting them to promptly enlist the services of a boat captain with a small vessel on the shore.

The boat captain cautioned that the boat could only accommodate eight persons at a time. Despite this limitation, Latava 'Latty' Robinson and six others boarded the small boat for the first of three intended trips. Unfortunately, moments into the journey, the vessel capsized.

Kim, who was on the shore, recounted the unsettling moment when a member of the group realised that something had gone terribly wrong with the boat.

"One of mi friends said the boat turn over. We walk up a bit closer but it never look like it turn over. We walk to the other side and we see like dem a wave up dem hand," she told THE STAR.

Seconds later, she got a frantic call from a friend who was on the boat that the vessel had indeed capsized. She said by this time the lifeguards were already rushing to the scene. Kim said although they were in a state of shock and panic, they walked through the mangroves hoping to get closer to their struggling friends who were fighting to get back to shores.

"One person reach on the shore and mi hug him up and start cry. Him actually swim to the shore and after that mi see the lifeguard dem start carry in everybody else, so mi start ask which part Latty deh, and nobody never did a ansa. Mi ask again and then someone tell mi say she did a panic and dem a try hold on pon har, and when she go down she don't come back. After that mi just faint weh," Kim said.

The 21-year-old has not been seen since. A search and rescue operation, which involved the police and the Jamaica Defence Force coast guard, was affected by poor visibility and rough seas over the past two days. Family members of the missing woman fear the worse has happened. Sitting on their verandah in Washington Gardens, St Andrew, two of Robinson's siblings could not help but refer to her in the past tense.

They said Robinson was making plans to celebrate her 22nd birthday with all nine of her older siblings on December 7.

"We had a WhatsApp group where we were organising her party. She is the smallest and she wanted all of us to go out along with her close friends and go to a restaurant and so on," said a tearful Latanya Johnson.

"Our mother died last year and she was very depressed about it, so from that she would work and just go out sometimes and live her best life. On Friday, she sent me some money and told me that she wanted me to keep it for her and that was our last conversation. I didn't know that she was going on a trip or anything," Johnson added.

The siblings said Robinson was the life of the party and knew how to put smiles on their faces.