On February 27th, 2020, four BDF soldiers went up in a helicopter that came crashing down due to a pre-dawn pilot error.
That day, all four soldiers - Majors Adran Ramirez and Radford Baizar and Corporals Reynaldo Choco and Yassir Mendez - were killed, leaving their families without breadwinners.
For the wives of Choco and Mendez, they retained a lawyer and over the past four years have been fighting for fair compensation. But that still hasn't happened. Today, Courtney Menzies spoke to their attorney and has this story.
One year ago, attorney Audrey Matura asked the government to settle the compensation owed to the wives of two of the four BDF soldiers that died in a helicopter crash in 2020.
Fast forward to the fourth anniversary to the death of these soldiers, and their wives have yet to be paid.
Today, Matura lit two candles in her office next to the photos of Corporal Reynaldo Choco and Corporal Yassir Mendez, the two soldiers whose wives she represents.
And after all this time, she's hoping that case will come to a close soon. But as she explained, there have been two major reasons for all the delays.
Audrey Matura, Attorney
"The problem we are having is that this matter has gone through three judges. First Westmin James, then Genevieve Chabot and now we're just appearing again in front of a new judge, Justice Tawanda Hondora so when we do appear in court, yes the judges do their work, but when we change judges, these three are judges that are coming, going, coming, going, so we are at a standstill but one of the things we did was to apply for an interim payment."
"But before we even applied for the interim payment, we wrote the government, we pleaded with them, like come on, you all must could make a payment. No answer."
"How could you say we accept that we are liable for the death of these two gentlemen but yet when it comes to facilitating the process to get payment, you stall, you object to everything. We even had to apply for specific disclosure because for us to calculate what these families are entitled to."
"So that's how far back we are in terms of, we've done our work, but two things working against us: the government objects to everything, to us they act in bad faith, and of course the judges that come on short term contracts. They come, they do their part, then they leave."
And for the women and children left behind, it hasn't been easy. And after calculating the compensation, they're now claiming a million dollars each. Originally, the government had only offered $100,000, which Matura advised against accepting. But four years later, with not even a cent of interim payment, these families have been struggling.
Audrey Matura, Attorney
"Fortunate for one family, that is the family of Corporal Reynaldo Choco, his wife is a teacher so she had some kind of footing, however, they had some kind of agreement that after his education was put first, it would have been her turn now for him to invest in her education, that's not possible, she had to go back to work so the compensation to put herself in a better footing. The other family, the family of Corporal Yassir Marcus Mendez, now that's a different one because that young lady was a stay at home mom with children so he was the sole breadwinner for that family so for her it has been the toughest. She has actually informed me that now she had tried to find how to to buy and sell items to try and make a living in the interim until we get compensation."
And Matura hopes that the government's plan isn't to delay the case long enough for the women to give up and accept the payout. And she says that with a new judge comes renewed hope.
Audrey Matura, Attorney
"The good news about seeing that we finally got a notice that there's a judge assigned to the case is positive because I have at least three letters, I kept sending since last year, can you please tell us when we get a judge, we have those correspondence because I try to work with the setbacks in the court system but once a judge is assigned, we, the attorneys could push the case forward."
