It was nearly 3 p.m. Monday, January 16, when the mother of two of Shawn Shaw’s three children came to the scene. She had a small baby in hand and clambered upright over the steep incline to get to the level about 200 feet up from the dirt road where her boyfriend had lived. They had shared in the birth of two children before the relationship ended years ago.
She looked around, bent under the massive cotton tree, more than three feet in diameter, that had crushed the wood and zinc house that Mr Shawn and his two children occupied. She wert closer, looked, shook her head and her mother, Lurline Cunningham took the small baby in her arms away from her, so she could move more freely and safely.
The side of the house offered a stunning look into Ocho Rios Harbour and above the cruise ship in Port. But Natalee Smith’s eyes were trying to just take in everything around the crushed house. She shook one corner that stood up, as if it to test its flimsiness. Her mother scolded her.
She asked about the pear tree limbs that had come down and the almond tree, as the Cotton Tree left its root, killing.
Then she started answering questions in one or two words.
Thirty seven year old Natalee Smith and her mother, Lurline Cunningham lived in Trelawny. She has three children with Mr Shaw, the younger one living with her. Ms Smith, the baby she had in arms and her mother had just come from the hospital where the young Shawn Shaw, also called Randy Junior. He had spoken to them. He told her that he had some money under a mattress and he had been saving it to buy a cell phone. He was talking clearly, they said but not able to sit up and the hospital staff has suggested he may have issues with his hip.
Ms Smith had not seen her daughter, Sheriana in two years. The grandmother said the girl was well mannered, loving and her teachers from Walkerswood had come to them and said great things about Sheriana, who would have been 14 on January 26.
Shawn Anthony Shaw who remains in hospital will be 12 in July but without a father. His grandmother wondered aloud about his clothes, where they were and what would be provided for him in hospital.
Natalee Smith kept looking around checking the mattress on the two small beds in the room. Her face was emotionless as if she was still in shock. Asked how she was felling after seeing the destruction and scene of loss of two people she had loved, she said, “Bwoy mi cahn tell yuh.”
