Youth electrocuted while helping father, brother install gate

Days after his son Atijo was electrocuted, Oxley Lockhart has found some measure of peace from drawings he discovered in the boy’s art book.{{more}}

Yesterday, Lockhart showed SEARCHLIGHT eerie drawings that his son did recently at school. One drawing depicts a heart and what appears to be electric charges flowing through it. Another drawing shows what his father interprets to be a cemetery.

Other drawings depict a house and a room, with crosses on the windows and on the wall.

“When I see these, my body just get warm. Is like ‘Tijo already know what his destiny going to be,” Lockhart told SEARCHLIGHT.

In an interview on Sunday, as he related the last moments he had spent with his youngest child, the veteran mas man and father of six tried his best to keep his composure.

Hard as he tried, it was difficult for Oxley to hold back the tears, as he told SEARCHLIGHT of the tragic death of Atijo, on Saturday afternoon, shortly after 3 p.m. Atijo died while he was assisting his father and brother with the assembly of a gate in the Harmony Hall community.

Speaking from the family home at Mckies Hill, Lockhart, popularly known as Giddy, said that he, Atijo and another son, Atiron, were getting ready to install the gate, when the misfortune took place.

He said that just before he and Atiron were about to weld a wheel to the gate, he sent Atijo to their car to retrieve a pair of gloves.

“He go in the car to get the gloves, but when he look he say ‘No Dadda, the gloves ain’t there,’ so he came back,” Lockhart recounted.

“So, I now bending down to line up the gate, and it had a load of sand was there and the gate was resting on the sand, and the sand was wet.

“So, when I hold the gate and the brother strike, I hear his scream.

“The time I hear him and I watch up, I see him flinching. I thought the gate drop on his foot… so I jump and tried to push him… that is when I feel the current through him and then I feel it coming from the sand.”

Lockhart said he grabbed his son and made two attempts to get out of the sand.

He said that he and Atijo fell to the ground and he took his son in his lap. At this point, Atijo sat up for a moment, then his body went limp.

“I started to give him CPR and pump his chest.

“And I praying ‘Oh God, help him. Father Jesus, help him, help us’ and he won’t respond and I pumping his chest and CPR and saying ‘Jesus, help him….”

At this point the father broke down for the first time.

Lockhart said that he and his son put Atijo into their vehicle and as he drove to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital. Atiron continued to administer CPR and spoke to his brother, whom he said had a weak pulse.

“We head to the hospital, and me and my son take him on the bed and I hear when the doctor say his heartbeat is weak.

“Then I come out and call my wife and tell she ‘Tijo just get shock and he in the hospital and the doctor say his heartbeat weak,” Lockhart continued.

“And by the time I done make that call and go back in, he was gone. I calling him and he won’t answer me; I realize he gone,” the father said just before his second burst of uncontrollable tears.

Lockhart described his youngest of six children as the baby of the family, who was loved by everyone.

He pointed out that Atijo always liked to accompany him on jobs, and had an interest in the arts, an area in which they both believed he would have excelled.

The boy, a past student of the Petersville school, had just entered form four of the St Martin’s Secondary School.

His father said Atijo had started going to church on a regular basis, and had started confirmation classes at the St George’s Cathedral.

The father stated that the entire family was shaken up by the heartbreak of losing Atijo, whom he said was cheerful, loving and friendly.

“He very humble, quiet; he was beloved; he gave no elders attitude because I didn’t bring them up that way. Every kid come by this place was attached to him. Had a close relationship with his brothers and sisters and relatives.”

Lockhart said it was on the occasion of Atijo’s 15th birthday in May this year that the family came together, took photos and celebrated.

The next time family would be coming together again would be to bid farewell to a beloved son and brother.

“I prayed. I say ‘God help us’. I thought he would ah ketch heself, I was expecting to hear him get up in the back (of the car)… but God knows best,” the father said as he answered his phone to take a call from someone who rang to offer condolences.