Five teenagers lost their lives in a tragic car crash on Shirley Street, and their families have been left reeling from a second devastating blow: the unannounced, complete removal of the roadside memorial they created to honor their children. The makeshift site held irreplaceable personal mementos, including photographs of the victims, and had become a quiet space for grieving parents to process their overwhelming loss. As of press time, local newspaper The Tribune has not been able to identify who ordered or executed the memorial’s clearance, leaving families without answers or a party to hold accountable.
Damian Stubbs, father of 17-year-old victim Diamond Stubbs, was the first family member to discover the removal during a visit this Monday. It had taken Stubbs weeks to gather the emotional courage to return to the crash site, and he initially mistook the construction activity for routine water infrastructure work. He told reporters he was so stunned by the sight of workers burying the memorial that he left the site immediately, too overcome with anger and grief to confront the crew.
Urged by his wife to return the following morning to retrieve Diamond’s portrait — which he had planned to bring with him to Cat Island to hang above his bed — Stubbs arrived to find the entire memorial gone. He immediately began reaching out to the families of the other four victims: 19-year-old Keno Gordon Jr, 18-year-old Betrica Brown, 19-year-old Evalena “Lilly” Johnson, and 19-year-old Stania Webb. None of the families had received prior warning of the removal. When Stubbs traveled to Cat Island to share the news with Stania Webb’s father, he too was completely caught off guard.
Stubbs emphasized that the oversight was an unnecessary cruelty to families already deep in mourning. All the families asked for was the chance to collect the personal items that mattered most, before any removal took place. “If they had approached us, we would have moved what we wanted and if they wanted to get rid of whatever at least they could have given us the opportunity to say what we had to move, if only the girls’ pictures,” Stubbs said. Many of the photos were intended to be moved to the teenagers’ gravesites once burials were complete, a process that is still ongoing for the families.
In a bewildering detail that has added to the families’ frustration, the large tree stump at the crash site was left untouched even as the entire memorial was cleared away. Addressing the unknown parties responsible for the removal, Stubbs issued a direct plea: “Tell those people Mr Stubbs say find his daughter picture because I’m coming for it.”
Shantika Williams-McQueen, mother of victim Keno Gordon Jr, told reporters she had no idea the memorial had been cleared, and had not yet found the emotional strength to visit the crash site herself. She explained that the removal came at an especially raw moment: none of the five victims have had their funerals or completed burial arrangements, and families are still in the acute phase of grieving.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but especially at this time, you know that there’s still a lot of grieving and stuff going on,” she said. “There hasn’t even been, like, the funerals or anything like that for the complete burial of them as yet. I don’t think it should have been removed at this time.” Williams-McQueen added that many of Keno’s friends had left personal items at the memorial for him, and she had been looking forward to the chance to collect those mementos to place at his gravesite once the service was held.