Elderly woman washed away in gully found dead

When 77-year-old Beryl Bryan did not return from a trip to secure her goats in Drewsland, St Andrew, as it rained heavily on Thursday afternoon, Lorraine Shaw had an intuitive sense of unease.

Bryan was accustomed to venturing out to secure her animals from the rain for years as they would oftentimes wander into the Sandy Gully located metres from their home as they roamed in the days.

When Shaw determined that her mom should have already returned, she grabbed an umbrella and headed out with a sense of dread in search of Bryan.

Unsuccessful in her efforts, Shaw returned home, crying, and her brother, Vivian, took the umbrella to venture out to try to locate his mother as well.

Walking through the lane, he called out her name, hoping that she had stopped at a neighbour’s house to shelter.

The family’s worst fears were realised when Bryan’s body was discovered on Friday after she was swept away by water in the gully near her home.

“When Vivian tek di umbrella from Lorraine, him seh, ‘I wonder if da woman deh go in a di gully and mek water wash her weh’, and a di same thing happen,” Vivian’s wife, Denise Samuels Shaw, told The Sunday Gleaner on Friday with grief thick in the air.

Samuels Shaw said that on Thursday, a resident of the area reported seeing a woman wearing a pair of red shorts and a white blouse in the rushing waters of the gully.

A few residents from the community and from Riverton City failed to locate the missing woman.

On Friday, a larger search party was assembled and the search came to an end after midday, when the body was found kilometres away in a section of Riverton.

Judith Samuels, one of Bryan’s daughters, thanked those who helped to locate her mother’s body, expressing relief that it was not eaten by crocodiles.

“The search was good today, and the Drewsland team that went out, we went out in full force and we really appreciate them,” she said on Friday. “We had some police with us and some firemen with us, and mi really appreciate them.”

Samuels was too distraught to speak with our news team much longer, but community members recalled Bryan being a “kind, loving, good and miserable foundation member”.

One Drewsland resident, Jennifer Rowe, recalled last seeing Bryan picking leaves from an ackee tree to feed her goats.

“I’ve been living here from I was seven years old til now. I am 57 years old – 50 years in the community – and mi a tell you, mi enjoy every moment with her,” she told The Sunday Gleaner. “A lot of things she teach mi – creativity, how fi help miself. Is a woman who a hustler. She raise her little goat. ... We a go miss her! Miss her! She a one a mi mentor!”

Dustie Henry Brooks, who was among the search party, said he and Bryan had been neighbours for 37 years.

“She miserable. She nice. She plain. She nah tell you no lie ... . She a go tell you the truth. She just miserable, but she nice,” she said.

“Is a woman of livelihood. She cook her pudding, she have her little shop. You can come come at any time. When the shop lock, and yuh head a hurt you, and when you seh, ‘Girl, mi want one pill’, she seh, ‘Mi lock, enuh’, but she a sell you. She nice, man,” Brooks said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com