More than 21 hours after David Mayers disappeared under water at Clifton Hill Beach, Point Fortin, his mother, Angela Collymore sat in the balcony of their La Brea home waiting for her phone to ring.
Although Collymore accepted that her son was gone, she trembled constantly, having not slept over the loss of her only son.
Mayers, 26, of Majouba Road, La Brea had gone to the beach with friends around noon on Sunday.
Shortly after 3 pm when a beach ball that children were playing with, drifted outward, Mayers decided to retrieve it. When it got too far, he turned around, but went under the water and never resurfaced.
Collymore said Mayers was a good swimmer and suspected that he may have gotten a cramp while swimming. She said he would usually swim from the Brighton Jetty to the surrounding beaches.
A report was made to the lifeguards, who along with his friends scoured the shore. When that failed, the Coast Guard was called in and divers were deployed. At nightfall, the search was called off.
Collymore said she got a premonition of her son’s death shortly after 3 pm when she felt a crippling pain in her abdomen.
“It felt like I got an electrical shock. With that, I said to myself, ‘What is this?’ It was right after they call me and let me know what had happened,” Collymore said.
It was a sad end to a promising future as Collymore said that since Mayers finished secondary school, he did several courses to become skilled in working offshore and in industrial plants. Although he was unemployed, she said he last worked as a rigger on the Juniper platform project. She described him as a hard worker, humble, friendly and prayerful young man. —Kevon Felmine
