Mother hopes to find missing daughter

Nelcia Stay is confident that her daughter’s body would be recovered from the raging waters off Rock Gutter.

The mother of 15-year-old Chanstacia Stay, who it is presumed perished when the minibus she was travelling in from Fancy crashedinto the sea on Monday this week, told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday {{more}}that she yearned to see her ‘big baby’ at least one more time, so she could have some closure.

“I just want to see her and get to hold her and say that I love her, then I’ll be ok. I believe that she would be recovered. I pray and ask God to bring her to me.”

Nelcia, like most of the other grieving parents, remembers seeing her daughter head off to school shortly before 7 a.m. She then boarded the minibus, HL 636, owned by the Fancy Apostolic Mission, and driven by Ravanan Nanton, for the journey to the North Union Secondary School.

“Monday was a normal day, I gave her some money to go to school. I didn’t tell her I love her that morning, but she knows, she knows.

“I was just getting ready to go to work at the Fancy clinic and I hear Melicia calling Cindy saying something about the van. So I was thinking it was the white van turn over… and when I reach in the porch, they say no is the red van, and I picked up her slippers and I started to cry,” the mother said, as she broke down.

The mother of two said that she joined the hundreds of villagers who journeyed to the site of the tragedy, looking for her daughter. She said that she was initially informed that her daughter was alive, but was already transported to the Owia clinic to be treated for injuries.

When she got there, however, she did not find Chanstacia, but was then told that Chanstacia was one of the persons unaccounted for.

“They tell me she was on top of the van, but they couldn’t help her because the swell came and took her away, and I went to Sandy Bay clinic and nobody see her and I went by the water and look into the sea, and up to now I can’t see my child.”

Nelcia was on hand when bodies were pulled from the waters, but none of them was her daughter.

Surrounded by supportive family members, whom she said were doing their best to ease the pain, Nelcia described her daughter as a loveable individual, who got baptized recently and lifted the spirits of persons with whom she came into contact with her warm and friendly personality.

“She was always smiling and she loved to sing; everybody remember her always singing. She was quiet and she would always say good morning and good evening.

“She loved music and she loved playing the recorder, I want the children to play the recorder for her when I am going to bury her,” a hopeful and teary-eyed Nelcia said.(JJ)