Photo by Avia Collinder
Simone Gayle displays the bloody uniform of her dead child, two-year-old Mona, who was crushed by a truck in front of the basic school which she attended.

Avia Collinder, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Simone Gayle first ran, then flung herself on the ground when she heard that her two-year-old had been killed under the wheel of a truck on Waltham Park Road in St. Andrew on December 6. She picked herself up, stumbled, fell, and then she got up and ran.

"I fell down on the ground pulling out my hair. This was on Waltham (Park Road). Then I got up and ran up and down Waltham (Park Road), then down Woodpecker Avenue and on to Bay Farm Road," the grieving mother relates. A concerned neighbour ran with her to ensure that she - maddened by loss - did not hurt herself.

No consolation

The 30-year-old mother of three other children could not be consoled.

When The Sunday Gleaner visited her home, on Tuesday, December 18, Gayle admitted that she had not thrown away the blood-stained uniform of little Roymona Stanley, who would have been three years old on that day.

She recalls: "I was going to meet them coming from school when a young man came to me as if he had something to say. But, he just stared into my eyes and would not talk. Then a woman came to me and said, "Lady, your baby has been killed by a truck."

"It was not true," says Gayle, "she could not be dead, she is still at school. But I still went down to the Kingston Public Hospital; neighbours took me. I saw 'Mona', dead, with her eyes half-open, blood running from her nose, mouth and ears. Her belly was sunken, as if someone had sucked all the breath from her body."

On Tuesday, three days after Gayle's attempt to outrun reality, she was more subdued, but still grieving. We found her at her small house on Woodpecker Avenue, busy getting ready for a candlelight vigil to be held by the community for the dead toddler.

Stanley Blake, Mona's father, is equally stricken he has thrown himself into work, helping interior decorator Sharon Lowe to fulfil a long list of projects for clients over the holiday season.

He misses his daughter, Gayle states, but he is grieved most of all by the apparent indifference of the authorities.

"Is like they kill puss pickney ... a little kitten. Is like they kill a dog. Nobody cares. But for me, it's like a part of me is dead," Blake bemoans.

Until today, the parents note, the driver of the truck involved in the death of Mona Stanley on Saturday, December 15, has not been charged.

"He is driving the truck same way," Gayle says bitterly.

Siblings recount

Mona's siblings - nine-year-old Ramone and five-year-old Staneisha - with solemn and earnest faces, recount the moments before their sister died. They wrestle with words as they compete to tell their tale:

"The truck, it go on my foot and drive over everywhere, all over Mona," Staniesha recounts.

Ramone explains that he had gone to pick up his younger sisters at Little Angel Learning Centre on Mahoe Drive. When they were crossing the street, he says, the truck was parked in its usual spot beside the school. However, when they were almost on the other side of the road, it began moving, rolling over Staniesha's leg, crushing Mona, and injuring Ramone.

"The man stop at the school gate and come out holding his head," Ramone recalls.

Only Royesha, their seven-year-old sister, escaped unhurt. The three children were hospitalised at Kingston Public Hospital, where Mona was pronounced dead.

Staniesha's broken right leg was set and Ramone was treated for bruises to his left foot and chest.

As numb as she is by grief, Simone is irate.

"I have been talking to them about that truck parked beside the school for years. The man lives across the road on the right side. All the police ask me are the names of the children and my address and where the accident happened.

No statements

"They do not want to take statements from the children. I asked him, 'If this child who has died belonged to one of your colleagues, would you be acting like this?'"

The parents have contacted their lawyer and will be pursuing the matter in the courts to get what they believe is justice.

No picture of the toddler is to be found in their small house on Woodpecker - all were sent abroad to relatives, their mother explains - but in their hearts, the baby, her painful death and the lost years are being mourned.