KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A moth­er who woke with sud­den chest pains be­fore dawn now be­lieves she felt the mo­ment her son died.

Mu­si­cal artiste Mar­ques “Ras­ta Marky” Fi­garo was among two men killed in an ear­ly morn­ing crash along the South­ern Main Road, St Mar­garet’s.

Tears flowed freely as Brid­get Fi­garo sat out­side her San Fer­nan­do home yes­ter­day, watch­ing the mu­sic video for her son’s sin­gle, In­ten­tions, a track re­flect­ing life’s strug­gles.

Fi­garo, 38, and for­mer na­tion­al Un­der-17 foot­baller Tyrek James, 27, both of Mara­bel­la, died with­in min­utes of the crash around 3.40 am. The dri­ver, De­nil­son St Vin­cent, 25, re­mains hos­pi­talised.

Po­lice said St Vin­cent was dri­ving a Nis­san Almera south along the road­way when he al­leged­ly swerved in an at­tempt to avoid road­works be­ing car­ried out by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) along the west­ern lane. The ve­hi­cle crossed the road­way and slammed in­to a con­crete and steel wall on the east­ern side.

The im­pact caused ex­ten­sive dam­age to the front and sides of the ve­hi­cle. Both Fi­garo and James were pro­nounced dead at the scene, while the dri­ver was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal.

At her home, Brid­get re­called plac­ing a tablet un­der her tongue as she ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere chest pain short­ly be­fore learn­ing of her son’s death. Mo­ments lat­er, her grand­son checked on her, and short­ly af­ter, her old­er son, who lives abroad, re­layed the trag­ic news.

She rushed to the scene.

“I changed my clothes and reached down there af­ter 4 am and saw my child on the ground, and his eyes were puffy. Ap­par­ent­ly, he was prob­a­bly sleep­ing. He was in the back seat. I know him so well that any­time Marky sits in a car, if they are hang­ing out, as he reach­es, he just slumps and falls asleep. I don’t know, I guess he was prob­a­bly sleep­ing.”

“When I reached, I just said eter­nal peace grant un­to him, Oh Lord, and let your per­pet­u­al light shine up­on him and re­leased my child soul to the spir­i­tu­al realm.”

Fi­garo leaves be­hind a 17-year-old son, who lives with Brid­get and strug­gled yes­ter­day to come to terms with his fa­ther’s sud­den death.

Fi­garo had been try­ing to re­build af­ter los­ing his job with CEPEP, hold­ing on to his am­bi­tion of mak­ing it in mu­sic. He had re­cent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on a rhythm with an artiste in St Mar­tin and was plan­ning to trav­el there in Ju­ly to pro­duce a track.

“My whole thing about my child is that I knew him as the life of the par­ty. Every­thing about Marky’s life was live­ly and hap­py, nev­er a dull mo­ment. He was kind to peo­ple, that I know of; every­body would talk about him that way. That is the side I knew as a moth­er.”

His moth­er said he had been as­sist­ing his friend James with re­pairs to his wife’s fam­i­ly home in Mara­bel­la.

In that area, grief was equal­ly heavy at the home of James’ moth­er-in-law, Hazel Mo­hammed, who lament­ed both his death and the un­fin­ished work he had promised to com­plete.

Mo­hammed said James had been help­ing to re­pair the home but had run out of mon­ey. He had re­cent­ly as­sured her he would re­sume con­struc­tion work to earn enough to fin­ish the project—a promise now left un­ful­filled.

Around 4.30 am, her daugh­ter re­ceived a call in­form­ing her that James had died in a crash.

“I said, ‘No girl, that is not true girl. Wait a lit­tle while, some­body will call you again.’ By the time I came out­side, she had al­ready called some­body, and they went to see, and when she reached, she called me at the side, and she told me yes, he re­al­ly died.”

Mo­hammed said po­lice lat­er told the fam­i­ly the car may have skid­ded along a sec­tion of road­way where WASA works were on­go­ing.

Po­lice said ef­forts to in­ter­view the dri­ver have so far been un­suc­cess­ful due to his med­ical con­di­tion.