17-y-o watched best friend drown

“I can’t believe I watched my friend drown and couldn’t help him.”

Those sentiments of regret and helpless desperation still haunt 17-year-old Jason White, who is still visibly shaken weeks after witnessing the death of his best friend, teenager Jordan Robb, at Bob Marley Beach in Eleven Miles, Bull Bay, on Easter Monday.

Robb, also 17, had plans to enlist in the Jamaica Defence Force after sitting external exams and graduating from Clan Carthy High School in Vineyard Town, Kingston, and would have shared in Mother’s Day celebrations on Sunday. He had promised his mother that he would make her proud by scoring passes in six subjects.

Robb was reputed to be a good swimmer, and White thought he was having fun. But when he saw the teenager plunge beneath the water twice – the second time screaming for help – he realised that Robb was in distress.

White has vowed never to return to the beach because of the harrowing memories.

“What bothers me is the fact that I asked for help, and nobody moved. It is so sad. I don’t have words to describe how I feel right now,” he lamented

White had phoned the boy’s mother, Sheena Johnson, with the gut-wrenching news that Jordan was in grave danger.

As the mother dashed to the beach, which was five minutes away, she pressed White to get help but was stunned by his disclosure that no one on the beach was willing to rescue the flailing teen.

When Johnson rushed on to the beach, she saw White, who was emotional and a shadow of himself. White said that he begged for help and was told that he was on his own.

“I turned to him, and I said show me the person you asked for help, and he told you this, and he pointed to a well-known fisherman,” said Johnson in a Gleaner interview.

“I said to the fisherman, ‘You see my son a drown and you couldn’t help?’ His only remark was that he didn’t know he was my son,” Johnson said of the comments by the fisherman, whose behaviour she deplored.

Johnson, meanwhile, revealed that school administrators have been supportive in providing counselling.

The mother of four further stated that although she was torn, she was awaiting the autopsy to give her second son a dignified funeral.

ruddy.mathison@gleanerjm.com