A devastating road collision at the intersection of Shirley Street and Church Street has claimed its fifth victim, leaving two Bahamian mothers grappling with unspeakable grief in vastly different ways. Nineteen-year-old Keno Gordon Jr. passed away on Saturday morning while receiving care in a hospital intensive care unit, where loved ones had held vigils, prayed for his recovery, and circulated public appeals for emergency blood donations. His death elevated the total fatalities from the crash to five.
The 19-year-old driver of the Mazda sedan involved in the incident was taken into police custody over the weekend, and local news outlet The Tribune has confirmed he is expected to face formal criminal charges in court this Monday. The four other victims, all young women between the ages of 17 and 19, were childhood friends who grew up together on Cat Island: 17-year-old Diamond Stubbs, 18-year-old Betrica Brown, 19-year-old Evalena “Lilly” Johnson, and 19-year-old Stania Webb.
For Keno Gordon Jr.’s mother, Shantika Williams-McQueen, overwhelming grief has not given way to anger toward the detained driver. In an interview, she opened up about the quiet hope she held through her son’s final days, visiting the hospital daily to pray over him, speak words of encouragement, and urge him to keep fighting. “I had very, very high hopes,” she said. “But I also trust God and serve God.” When the call came Saturday morning confirming her son’s passing, she broke down after days of maintaining composure for her family.
Williams-McQueen explained that her son and the driver shared deep familial ties through their Cat Island community, having grown up practically as family. “Things happen, accidents happen, mistakes happen. I don’t believe that he had any ill intentions towards any of them,” she said, pushing back against widespread public anger that erupted after social media videos showed the driver receiving visitors from loved ones in the aftermath of the crash, a display many victim relatives decried as lacking remorse.
She shared intimate details of her son’s young life, which held so much unfulfilled promise. Raised in Cat Island by his grandmother while Williams-McQueen lived first in New Providence and later Exuma, Keno graduated from Old Bight High School before moving to New Providence to seek work and save for his dream: attending college abroad and launching a career as a professional basketball player. At the time of the crash, he was employed by Royal Caribbean and was scheduled to start a new role at CocoCay the very next day. A quiet, kind, and determined young man, he loved participating in Junkanoo with the Roots group, and had shared a special bonding trip abroad with his mother just months before, where she took him to a business seminar to show him his potential was limitless. Their planned second trip never happened.
For Dianna Wright, mother of 19-year-old victim Evalena “Lilly” Johnson, the tragedy has been compounded by days of agonizing uncertainty while she was stranded in Canada, unable to get clear confirmation of whether her daughter was alive or dead. Wright, who has lived in North America for years, explained that all of Evalena’s immediate family resides outside The Bahamas. After learning her daughter had been caught up in the crash, she made dozens of calls and dispatched local relatives and friends to confirm her identity.
Hospital staff told Wright that Evalena had no identification on her when she was admitted, so official confirmation could not be released, forcing the family to file a formal missing person report with traffic police. It took three full days before the family received formal confirmation that Evalena was among the dead. According to documentation reviewed by family members, Evalena died shortly after arriving at the hospital in the early hours of the Sunday morning following the crash.
“Even though I had sent someone, my father and another friend of mine, to identify the body, and they have told me that it confirmed that it is her, it still feels surreal,” Wright said. She expressed deep frustration with the bureaucratic barriers that delayed confirmation, saying, “I get that they have rules and procedures that the hospital has to follow, but somebody was at the hospital from Sunday. Just tell me. I get that there’s privacy for other persons, but sitting here and not being able to get there to do anything, come on. There’s somebody else’s daughter. It was traumatising.”
Like Keno, Evalena was on the cusp of a promising new chapter when she died. After graduating high school in Canada, she had recently relocated to the United States, and had just landed a new job and submitted college applications days before traveling to The Bahamas to attend a family funeral. While her aunt encouraged her to pursue a career in medicine, Evalena dreamed of becoming a professional beautician – a talent she already practiced on her cousins, her mother, and friends, particularly when styling cornrows for young men. Wright described her daughter as a quiet, gentle young woman who grew into a bubbly, unforgettable presence once people got to know her, a trait that earned her the love of everyone she met. The nickname “Lilly”, which all her loved ones used, was given to her by her father, who passed away less than two years before her death, a loss Evalena never fully recovered from.
Wright joined other victim relatives in expressing disappointment over viral social media videos showing the driver after the crash, which she said appeared to show a lack of remorse for the crash that killed five young people. “I was disheartened when I saw it because it seemed that it was like a joke,” she said. “It does not feel or look good.” She also pushed back against online narratives that sidelined her daughter’s memory after Keno’s death raised the death toll, pushing back against framing Evalena as just an additional fatality. “I started to feel like I didn’t want her to become a forgotten like ‘three and, four and, five and’. No, it’s not ‘and’. She’s not an ‘and’,” she said. “She wasn’t out there being promiscuous. She wasn’t running away from home.”
The family is now making arrangements to travel to The Bahamas to bring Evalena’s remains home for burial, more than a week after the collision that shocked the nation.