And while a family gets ready to bury a mother and daughter, another child and his godmother are currently at the morgue after their vehicle was T-boned by an 18-wheeler.
10-month-old Abdur Smith took his final breath before even reaching his first birthday. And 40-year-old Tifara Samuels Hall will never see her 7-year-old daughter grow up. Both of them were passengers in a Geo Prism that was travelling on the George Price Highway. But they were clipped by a dump truck and pushed into the opposite lane, causing the Kenworth truck to smash them.
There are no words to encompass this type of tragedy, but today, the sole survivor in the Geo Prism, and the mother of the baby boy, found the strength to tell her account of the incident that has left two families broken. Courtney Menzies spoke with them today and has this story.
10-month-old Abdur Smith and his godmother, 40-year-old Tifara Samuels Hall were in the passenger seat of this Geo Prism, going on a casual drive with baby Abdur's mother, Golda Reynolds. It was a routine for them to get some fresh air after being locked up all day and their plan was to drive up to Hattieville before taking the Boom road and circling back to the city.
But they only made it up to about mile 12 on the George Price Highway before tragedy struck and while Reynolds survived the ordeal, she is now left with the grief of not only losing her son but her best friend. Still, she was able to recall how exactly it happened.
Golda Reynolds, Mother of Deceased
"The truck behind us decided that he wanted to overtake and the other truck that was coming in the correct lane start honking his horn because he saw that the other truck that was behind us was not able to overtake so he was honking his horn to alert. Now he was already about to overtake and then when he realized he could not make it or overtake us, he decided that he will drift back behind me but he misjudged and he clipped the back end between the driver's door and the back passenger's door on the drivers side and he pinned me in and he slant my vehicle to the side and he pushed me into the other lane and straight into the other oncoming truck that was coming."
"My baby died on the spot with my best friend. They were trapped as she was feeding the baby and putting him to sleep for the while because he was fussy and the baby was about to go sleep, was already in sleep mode when that car hit us you know."
"I tried to do everything, I held my baby and I watch that baby take his last breath. And I said, RJ, baby, just say something to mommy, please, just wanted him to say something. I see my child foaming from the mouth and I see him turn blue and I just hold him in my hands and I just say, just to hear him say something."
And accidents like these are exactly why Reynolds takes extreme caution on the road, never answering her phone or driving above the speed limit. She never thought someone else's carelessness would disrupt her life - to the point where she may not be able to walk properly again.
Golda Reynolds, Mother of Deceased
"I hit my chest, I was temporarily blind for an hour and change, lost my eyesight. I have so much abrasions over the left side and right side of my body. My whole back up to my hip is bruised, I recently had a C-section so the pain from the C-section is coming back because of the impact that I took in the driver's seat. I can't use my right leg, I can't stand on it. The doctor said I have watch it because they don't know if I will be able to stand again."
And after losing her mother back in March, she never thought she would lose her baby boy eight months later. She is now getting ready to bury a child who was once so full of life.
Golda Reynolds, Mother of Deceased
"RJ was a vibrant baby. I mean, he laughs, he smiles, he had his two teeth, he used to like to experiment on those two teeth. His favorite song was baby shark, and he likes this song that says the wheels on the bus goes round and round. He was just starting to step off to walk, he was crawling."
"He was very inquisitive, he wanted to know, I sit here on this laptop and he would come here and start to type."
"I don't miss a heartbeat from my baby. I don't miss a heartbeat for my children because I work damn hard and I take care of them 100 and more."
"It's rough, you know, because Lord, I've been through the most this year. But I have to stay strong for the next two."
And she'll also have to watch her best friend and closest confidant be laid to rest. Hall's husband of four years said when her coworker called him, he thought maybe she would just need time to recover. It wasn't until he got to the hospital that he realised time was up.
Calman Hall, Husband of Deceased
"I saw a police corporal with her ID and a police W with her purse and immediately I realized that it is more serious than what I was thinking."
"She was a very loving person and she has I would say a lot of kids and I say lot of kids because she raise a lot of kids meanwhile she is at school, she take care of those kids like it's her own."
"She was somewhat also of a therapist, enough people wouldn't see that part, but she was like a therapist because the young lady, Ms Golda, who is my cousin, she always had good things to pass on to her when she's in need of a friend to talk to."
"Now I'm in that situation. It's not the exact same, but now I'm in that situation and I watch it as if she's beside me telling me some of those things that she would have told her friends like try to be positive, think of all the good stuff."
"The entire Samuels family is broken, the Reynolds family is broken, we are hurting because of the tragic accident but at the same time we're trying to keep each other strong."
Hall's 7-year-old daughter - and all the other children she cared for as a school warden - are now left with the emptiness that comes with losing a parent and protector - a deep imprint of grief that now envelopes two families - one without a mother and one without a son
There are allegations that the dump truck driver failed to render aid to the passengers of the Geo Prism after the accident.
