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Mother hears daughter’s dying words over phone
by The Daily Herald
Posted: Aug 1, 2005 18:59 UTC
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– teacher becomes flood fatality –
ST. PETERS, St.Maarten - “I’m getting drowned mommy,” were the last words of Ingrid Maccow (30) to her mother over the phone before drowning in a flash flood in Saunders late Saturday afternoon.
Maccow, a social studies teacher at St. Maarten Academy’s BVO section, was trying to drive home in St. Peters around 6:00pm when the “river” of water on Arbutus Road caught her car. She called her mother to say that she was in trouble, got out of the car with her 15-year-old cousin and was washed away.
When Ingrid called her mother, Brenda Lake, she explained that a garbage bin had hit her car, which started to fill up with water and that the locks of her American car wouldn’t open. She told her cousin, who was in the car with her, to come out. “They came out opposite sides. The cousin grabbed a tree and held on until he was rescued. When he looked back, he didn’t see her,” said Lake.
“She underestimated the water. The last thing she told me was ‘I’m getting drowned mommy.’ I took off running. I wanted to help my child, but I tried to find a way out, but everywhere there was water, waves like the ocean, the drainage was too small,” Lake said, telling her story in her house on Raspberry Road.
Trying twice, even forming a human chain with six persons to go through the water at St. Peters Road and L.B. Scott Road, Lake finally came to her daughter near the junction of Arbutus Road and L.B. Scott Road close to 8:00pm. “When I reached, I met all these people standing there. I recognised her by her foot. She was full of mud, but I knew this was my child. I couldn’t leave. I stayed and cleaned her face.”
For Lake the loss of Ingrid, her eldest child, wasn’t the only personal catastrophe that had hit her and her family. Exactly nine months ago she buried her son Shawn, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat in St. Peters. Ingrid had left in the morning to put the finishing touches on her beauty salon in Dutch Quarter that she was planning to open.
Members of the board of St. Peters Community Council (SPCC), who visited the bereaved family Sunday, extended their condolences. Leader of Government Commissioner Sarah Wescott-Williams expressed her condolences to the Maccow family on Sunday on behalf of the people and Island Government.
“The people and Government are in solidarity with all those who have suffered during the flash floods,” she stated.
Lt. Governor Franklyn Richards extended his condolences in a press statement as well.
Police spokesman Inspector Johan “Janchi” Leonard called on possible witnesses to come forward in the interest of the investigation into the drowning. He too extended condolences, on behalf of the police force. (Suzanne Koelega)
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