IT WAS one of the most horrific tragedies in Barbados – the apartment collapse which claimed the lives of five members of a family, eight years ago.
Donavere Codrington, 30, his 27-year-old wife Cassandra and their children Shaquanda, 7, Shaquille, 3, and baby Yashiro, perished on August 26, 2007, when the Shalom Apartment Complex at Arch Cot Terrace, Brittons Hill, St Michael, plunged into a cave below.
Wednesday’s anniversary of the collapse, Shirley Linton, passed quietly with Cassandra’s mothersaying she felt as if she and her family were the only ones who were remembering the tragedy.
Linton came into the WEEKEND NATION’s offices yesterday to express her feelings.
“[Wednesday] was eight years with the Arch Cot that I lost my family and I could remember it like if it was yesterday,” said Linton, who wore on her dress a pin with a picture of her family. “I hurt right now and the reason that I hurt is that people in Barbados like duh forget about Arch Cot.”
Referring to a news conference held the same day by attorney David Comissiong to announce the annual commemoration of the Campus Trendz fire on September 3, in honour of the six young women who perished six years ago, Linton queried why no one had sought to publicly memorialise the deaths in her family.
Coincidentally, Comissiong is the lead attorney in a lawsuit filed in the Arch Cot case.
“Campus Trendz was tragic too but every year they host a service for them and a moment of silence and everything. Imean to say yes, them have their tragedy but Arch Cot was something that Barbados never had and I mean they should honour that but they kinda forget it.
“I want the people in Barbados to know that if they forget what happened in 2007, Shirley who is her [Cassandra’s] mother ain’t forget ’bout that at all. She would never forget as long as she live.”
Linton is not only raising the deceased couple’s child, eight-year-old Doniya, who the 53-year-old was babysitting at her New Orleans, St Michael home on that fateful day, but she is also now raising another granddaughter, Catarra, following the death last August of another daughter Zanelle.
“August is an unlucky month for me,” she said, shaking her head. “It is hard. I am struggling.”
Linton revealed that she was going through extreme emotional and physical pain because she was now dealing with a debilitating illness.
She suffers with kidney and heart disease and was forced to give up her security guard job last year.
“My fear right now is to see that I sick; I ain’t know how long I got to live and yet they ain’t coming through with anything,” she said in reference to the lawsuit which was filed after it was determined that the collapse was an “unavoidable accident”.
“I wouldn’t like that anything happen to me and Doniya ain’t getting the proper care that she should be getting. That is my biggest fear right now; Doniya,” Linton said, her voice breaking with emotion.
The dialysis treatment which she receives twice weekly leaves her in a weakened state but through it all she has to be strong for her two grandchildren.
Most of the support which was pouring in for Doniya following the death of her parents is no more. Linton said she and her son were fighting together to make ends meet.
She admitted that for the past two years she had not contacted a company which was assisting the little girl because its terms and conditions had become too onerous.
“If I want clothes, I have to write them; if Doniya has to go to the dentist or the doctor I have to write them. I am not about that confusion and I can’t take the lot of up and down; that ain’t for me. I am a sick woman.”
She also believes that the lawsuit would likely be a long drawn-out process.
“It is rough and these people here think that it is a sport thing raising a child and they ain’t come to a closure in wuh going on. This only happening to me because I am a poor woman. You feel if this was somebody else that was rich that they would’ve pulled this so long so? Eight years,” she cried.
The fact that she cannot financially assist Doniya as she would like to also has Linton in great distress, as she recalled fondly that Cassandra had never hesitated in looking after her mother’s needs.
“I does tell people all the time, if my daughter was alive I would never lack for nothing. If I want that bag there and I holler Casandra I want that bag at a snap of a finger I got it. That is why it hurting me to see how I ain’t really got the lot of help with Doniya through that she mother was good to me.”
Despite her illness, Linton said she was planning ahead for the 10th anniversary of the Arch Cot tragedy, in 2017, with or without the help of others.
mariabradshaw@nationnews.com
