For 27-year-old Mateo Winder, the ritual of checking in with his mother after every trip was as steady as the beat of a drum he played. It was a family tradition he had followed for years: send a message when he departed, and follow up with a call once he landed safely. On that fateful Friday, that simple routine became the final goodbye.
When Winder boarded a Flamingo Air small charter plane bound for North Andros, alongside other members of the local group Da Pond Band, his last text to his mother Ronella Hinsey was just one word: “Leaving.” Today, that single message is all she has left of her son, one of 10 people killed when the aircraft crashed shortly before landing at San Andros Airport. The band had been traveling to the island to perform at a scheduled regatta event.
Hinsey, a police inspector stationed in Abaco for work, first got the chilling hint of disaster when her mother called with early reports of the crash. Immediately, she reached out to Winder via WhatsApp, begging him to confirm he had landed unharmed. The message never went through. What followed was hours of agonizing, frantic searching for answers, as she called every authority, relative and contact she could think of to untangle what had happened.
For a brief, torturous moment, Hinsey allowed herself to hope. An aviation official who checked the passenger list told her Winder’s name did not appear on the manifest. “Okay, Lord, he’s not on it,” she remembered thinking, relief flooding her. That hope crumbled quickly into devastating dread, as calls went unanswered and contacts near the crash site avoided sharing the truth. When her brother, who had traveled to the crash site at her request, stopped picking up her calls, Hinsey knew. She had lost her son.
In the days since the crash, the grieving mother — who also serves as a gospel minister — has opened up about the quiet premonition that haunted her all week before the accident. “All that week, I just kept hearing or seeing something happening to my son and him being hurt, and he actually died,” she said. “I started praying and cancelling what I saw, and pleading the blood of Jesus over him and reading God’s word that he should not die but live to declare the works of the Lord.”
Even in her overwhelming grief, Hinsey says she has not questioned her faith. “I didn’t ask the Lord why, because I don’t want to question God, because He knows why everything happens,” she said. “Human understanding, we won’t understand it.” Instead, she has prayed that her son’s death will not be meaningless. “I told the Lord, if that is your will, you know everything before it happens. And I said, if that is your will, then so be it. But I want my son’s death, I want him to get glory out of it. I don’t want him to die in vain.”
Winder, who never married and had no children, built his entire life around three pillars: his faith, his family, and his music. A musical prodigy from toddlerhood, he began “playing” at two and a half years old, beating rhythms on his mother’s hairbrush and comb at the foot of her bed. By adulthood, he was a multi-instrumental talent, skilled on drums, keyboard, guitar, bass, and saxophone, and a gifted vocalist to boot. He performed regularly with both Da Pond Band and the Grammy Award-winning Baha Men, and ran his own successful business renting musical and entertainment equipment across New Providence.
Isaiah Taylor, leader of the Baha Men, called Winder like a son to him, recalling that the young musician had just joined the group for a performance in Milwaukee as their keyboard player shortly before the crash. “This is absolutely a big blow,” Taylor said. “It’s a big, big, big blow to the industry.”
In the wake of the tragedy, Taylor is issuing a urgent warning to fellow musicians who travel to small island events for performances: prioritize safety over a quick paycheck. “I will warn all of these musicians: do not be comfortable to jump on these charters to go to regatta to make a couple of dollars. Safety comes first. Make sure know what you’re flying, who you’re flying with,” he urged. Taylor added that he has avoided flying on small charters since a terrifying trip in the 1980s, and warned performers to consider the weight of their gear when boarding small aircraft. “If you are doing it, don’t put no kind of equipment on the plane, the little plane that you’re flying on. Because every piece of equipment that you would put on that plane also carries weight, and the plane can only lift with so much weight.”
To date, Bahamian authorities have not released any information on the cause of the crash, nor have they indicated that excess load played a role in the disaster. For Hinsey, Winder was far more than a talented musician — he was a warm, loving light who could turn anyone’s bad day around with a joke and a smile. “He was always smiling and if anybody had a bad day, he would come there and he would make you laugh,” she said.
For years, the pre-trip check-in was a guarantee: Winder would leave, arrive, and call home. This time, the “Leaving” message came. The return call never will.
