Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Isaac Jonas, grandfather of the two siblings killled in a motor vehicle accident on Tuesday, looks at a photo collection of Tishanna, his granddaughter whom he had raised since she was a baby. Her brother Nicholas also died in the accident. - Photo by Daraine Luton

AFTER spending most of the last decade in the United States, 76-year-old Isaac Jonas recently returned to Hope Flats in St. Andrew for a brief stay with his family.

Mr. Jonas has been home since October. Last Christmas dinner which his grandchildren Tishanna and Nicholas Gunn attended was a homely family event, but the elderly man had no idea it was the last one with two of his 96 grandchildren.

Tishanna, 18, who was pregnant and was heading to the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, and her 17-year-old brother, who was accompanying her, died after the motorcar in which they were travelling collided with a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus on Orange Street, downtown Kingston on Tuesday morning.

Child saved

Doctors were able to save her child's life but this is little comfort to a family that is now forced to make funeral arrangements for two of its younger members.

"They don't live any life yet, none a dem and they were nice children," Mr. Jonas told The Gleaner yesterday.

While tears did not flow from his eyes, his body language and his cracking voice spoke volumes of the tragic loss on Mr. Jonas. Tishanna's baby father had sent a car to take her to the hospital and Mr. Jonas bemoans the fact that his granddaughter did not tell him she was going into Kingston.

"I would have taken her myself," he said.

"You have no idea how it feels. I have Tishanna since she was a baby. She born three days before (Hurricane) Gilbert and I have her since," he said.

There was hardly any daylight between Tishanna and Nicholas. Born 13 months apart, the young Gunns who both lived at the family home in Hope Flats, St. Andrew, never abandoned each other.

"If yuh si one yuh si di other. Tishanna neva go any weh widout Nicholas. Anywhere you si one yuh si di other," Ricardo Jonas, the children's uncle told The Gleaner.

Mourning the tragic loss

Ricardo no longer lives at the family house but slept there Tuesday night in order to provide support to family members who have been mourning the tragic loss. The children's elder sister had to be treated for shock after receiving the news that two of her seven siblings were killed.

Orville Jonas, an uncle, remembers vividly his last exchanges with Tishanna. "She wake mi up an tell mi seh she a borrow mi key fi open di grill. Mi give har di key and den she open it and throw di key pom mi bed," Orville said.

Little did he know that would have been the last encounter with the young Gunns.

Winsome Jonas, an aunt who identified both bodies, said news of the passing was too much but she has sought divine intervention and the Lord is helping her to stand firm.

Contrary to some media reports which said Tishanna was eight months pregnant, Orville said her due date had passed and so she was going to the hospital to find out what to do. Tishanna, he said, was due to deliver in the last week of December and because of the festive weekend she decided to go to the doctor on the first working day of the year. Arrangements were made to take her to the hospital and Nicholas was not going to allow her to go alone. He never made it to the hospital with his sister as he died on the spot. Tishanna died later while undergoing treatment.

Winsome said when the teenagers were toddlers they both pulled down a pot of hot cornmeal porridge on themselves and were burnt. "Dem get burn together, go everywhere together and now di two a dem dead almost same time," the mourning aunt said.