Family shattered as father, daughter killed in Westmoreland motor vehicle crash
Published:Monday | May 13, 2024 | 12:09 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
A mother and a grand-mother are now left to grieve the deaths of their only daughter and son who were killed in a motor vehicle accident in Westmoreland on Friday.
Among the dead are Shanique Savariau, a grade-eight student of Godfrey Stewart High School, who is from Strawberry district in the parish, and her father, 48-year-old Alwyne Savariau, a welder of Friendship, Westmoreland.
Marcia Moss, 51-year-old shopkeeper of Shrewsbury in the parish, is now beside herself knowing that her 14-year-old child, left home without her knowledge and will never return.
“It is when I missed her, I asked one of the guys at the shop and he told me that her father came to pick her up in the bus and them gone a crab bush,” Moss told The Gleaner on Saturday as she recalled the last hours before learning of her daughter’s untimely death.
“I said, ‘Really, where is she going, she can’t catch crabs. Where is he going with the little pickney’, and now this happens,” she argued.
Moss informed that she was told of the accident that robbed her of the company of her daughter and her father by a member of the community.
The devastating news has now left her reeling from the pain and agony in losing her second of two children and her only daughter.
On Saturday the Westmoreland Police Division reported that three people died as a result of injuries they sustained in the motor vehicle collision on Bay Road, Little London in the parish Friday night.
The third victim is 43-year-old Owen Barnes, manager of a Good Hope address, also in Westmoreland.
Reports from the Little London police are that, about 9:40 p.m. on Friday, a Toyota Hiace motorbus and a Toyota Corolla motor car were travelling in opposite directions along the roadway, when the two vehicles collided head-on.
The police were summoned and the injured were transported to hospital where the drivers of both vehicles, along with Shanique, who was a passenger in the Toyota Hiace motorbus, were pronounced dead.
Six other people who were passengers in the Hiace bus were being treated for minor injuries at the Savanna-la-Mar Public General Hospital.
Shanique’s father, who was reportedly under the influence of alcohol, lost his life less than an hour after failing to obey advice from his friend not to venture out on the road that night.
Chad Murray, a resident of Friendship and a friend of the senior Savariau said he last saw him alive two hours before the fatal accident.
“When I saw him the night before his death, maybe he was half way already intoxicated,” Murray recalled. “There were people in the community who pressed and convinced him to go to crab bush, but I told him he was not in any state to go anywhere and that he should go to his bed, but he never obeyed and now he is dead.”
According to Murray, after urging his friend not to go on the road, 15 minutes later he observed the vehicle loaded with people leaving the community.
“On his way out, he pulled up at my foot and asked if I was coming and I ran him away and told him that he should be in his bed now and he drove off and then, next thing, I got news that he met in an accident and he along with his daughter died,” Alwyne’s friend said of him.
Eileen Fullwood said her only son was regularly involved in accidents and that she had warned him that the bus was going to kill him.
“He met in accidents several times, but [this time] he never made it [out alive],” Fullwood said, noting that for the past few weeks she observed that he was not acting normal.
“He just had the bus driving up and down and I said, ‘Ali, the bus a go kill you’,” she recalled warning her son days before he met his demise.
Nadine Dawson, who lives in Petersfield, said her niece and brother were well loved by the family and the community and their deaths have left a void in their lives.
She noted that Alwyne wanted to talk to her about something but never got the opportunity to share what was on his mind.
Dawson recalled that, on leaving home one day last week, her brother said he wanted to, but could not talk at the time and promised to call her on the phone.
“That call never came and I never followed up and now he is gone and I will never know what he wanted to talk about,” Dawson said as she tried to fight back her tears.