ANTHONY Marshall tried to rescue his daughter from Friday night’s raging inferno by scaling the roof of the Campus Trendz clothing store inside which she was trapped.
Marshall, 37, is hurting and hurting badly.
Pearl Amanda Cornelius is his firstborn and he tried everything he could to save his precious 18-year-old daughter, including climbing onto a fireman’s ladder to get onto the roof of the burning store on Tudor Street.
He and six-footer Alvin Babb ripped off the roof and made it to the top floor of the building but their efforts were thwarted by a concrete structure that prevented them from reaching Cornelius and five other young women who later died in the fire started by a group of bandits.
“The bodies weren’t badly burnt or disfigured,” Marshall said, in recalling their ordeal.
He noted that his daughter’s clothes and shoes were not damaged. He said “the fire did not get to them because they had the door locked to keep out the robbers.
“The heat [smoke inhalation] would have killed the girls,” he said.
Too distraught
When a SUNDAY SUN team visited his home yesterday at London Bourne Towers in Lower Bay Street, his wife Nicola Marshall, who was getting her nails done at a nearby salon on Tudor Street when she was alerted of the Campus Trendz fire, was too distraught to speak.
Anthony, a heavy-duty crane operator at the Bridgetown Port, is looking to divine healing to get over this difficult chapter.
“One shouldn’t question the Almighty, but you have to ask, ‘Why her and why now?’ The family has to get through this and have faith.”
Cornelius, who is Guyanese-born, resided in 10th Avenue, New Orleans, and was educated at Deighton Griffith Secondary.
“She was a good daughter. She was working on Fridays and Saturdays and was doing evening classes at Springer Memorial.”
Catholic priest Father Vibert Stephens also shared fond memories of her as a former altar server at the St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.
“She could always be relied on. Pearl was very pleasant, willing and always smiling. An angel on the altar, she was always willing to serve.”
Pearl would have been 19 in November.
