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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.

For seven months, the Rolle family had counted down the days to Macaro Rolle’s long-awaited return home to Andros. The 24-year-old certified lifeguard, who worked at the remote Ocean Cay resort, had navigated a multi-legged journey – a boat ride to Bimini, a connecting flight to New Providence, and a final charter flight on Flamingo Air bound for San Andros Airport – to get back to the loved ones he had not seen in half a year. His father waited at the airport arrivals gate to greet him; what unfolded on Friday would instead leave the family shattered by a preventable loss, they say.

Anthony Rolle, Macaro’s brother, was working at a location opposite the airport when a resident from their Nicholls Town community ran to deliver the devastating news: a small plane had crashed just off the runway. A second aircraft that had been trailing the Flamingo Air flight confirmed the passenger list, and within minutes, Anthony, their father, and other family members launched a desperate search for the wreckage.

Thick black smoke billowing from the crash site near the end of the runway was visible from the family’s starting point, but blocked rural roads cut off direct access. The delay would cost Macaro his life, his family says. As they fought to clear a path toward the wreckage, the injured young man managed to place a desperate phone call to his relatives from the charred aircraft.

In that final, heart-wrenching call, Macaro sounded initially strong, pleading for his family to reach him quickly. “Daddy, Daddy, please hurry up, come for me, Daddy. Y’all hurry up, come,” he told them, according to Anthony. He stayed on the line, describing the terrifying final moments of the flight – telling his family the aircraft had begun shaking violently and uncontrollably before impacting the ground – right up until the family could see the wreckage. When Anthony called out to him that they had arrived, the line went abruptly dead.

By the time the family fought through blocked roads and reached Macaro, roughly two hours after the crash, he could barely respond. When Anthony called his name, the only reply was a faint, almost inaudible hum. Macaro had sustained catastrophic full-body burns in the crash: all his clothing had burned away, and his skin was badly damaged from head to toe.

The family carried Macaro out of the brush in his father’s pickup truck and rushed him to the local clinic, where the small on-island medical team did everything they could to stabilize him. But the remote island lacked the specialized burn care Macaro needed, requiring an air ambulance to evacuate him to a larger facility in North Andros. For another two hours, the family waited for the emergency aircraft to arrive.

Macaro’s fight ended roughly 20 minutes before the air ambulance touched down. “They land after he already died,” Anthony said. The family believes that if emergency response had been faster, and if on-island medical access had been more robust, their brother would still be alive today. “The doctor tried all he could,” Anthony noted, but limited resources on Andros could not overcome the long delays in reaching care.

The tragedy has been compounded by the quiet plans Macaro had made for this trip: he had been building his own three-bedroom home on Andros, waiting for contractors to finish installing windows and doors ahead of his move-in. He never got the chance to step across the threshold of the home he built.

Remembered by his family as a warm, loving man deeply devoted to his faith, Macaro wove prayer into every small part of his daily routine. “Before Macaro eat or drink or answer his phone or leave outside, he have to pray before he do that,” Anthony said. “So if you can’t wait until he finish praying, you could leave him.” The family says they have no doubt that he said a prayer before boarding the flight that would take him home for the final time. Now, their once-joyful homecoming preparations have turned into funeral arrangements, leaving their parents distraught and the entire family grieving a life cut tragically short.

On an Independence Day that began with a spiritual deliverance service at Nassau’s Metropolitan Baptist Church, Bishop Elton Major’s life was forever altered when his congregation gathered outside his office with devastating news. A small passenger plane had crashed near San Andros Airport in North Andros, Bahamas, and the bishop’s adopted son, 34-year-old Melvin Henfield — a beloved musician and ordained minister known across the entertainment industry as DJ Fresh — was believed to be on board.

Bishop Major immediately tried to reach Henfield, who he had raised from the age of 13 after the young boy’s mother entrusted him to the bishop’s care. When there was no answer, a wave of dread washed over him; even during performances or busy work meetings, Henfield always made time to send a quick message promising to return the call. Knowing Henfield often traveled to Andros for gigs with his brother Ken, Bishop Major reached out to him next, holding out hope that his son had already arrived at his destination safely.

For a brief window, that hope held. Initial speculation suggested one person on the Flamingo Air aircraft had survived the crash, lifting the family’s spirits only to dash them moments later. When Ken finally called to confirm the worst — “We lose Melvin” — Bishop Major was left so numb with shock that he injured his foot and did not even notice he was bleeding until after the fact. “That’s how numb I was. I still have a problem coping with that,” he told reporters. “It don’t feel real to me, but it’ll never be the same.”

For Bishop Major, the crash was not just the loss of a well-known local public figure. It was the loss of the son he had fed, educated, and guided into adulthood, teaching him life’s small but critical lessons: how to tie a necktie, how to drive, how to weigh major life decisions. Henfield never knew his biological father, but he fully integrated into the Major family, becoming a beloved son and brother to the bishop’s biological children. “To meet him, to know him, is to love him,” Bishop Major said of his son. “Kind, caring, very compassionate, trusting. If he tell you something, he can do it. Might not do it right away, but he gonna get it done.” Henfield’s mother passed away five years ago, leaving the bishop as his closest surviving family member.

Christal “Peachy” Mackey, owner of Nassau’s women-only Peach Fit Studios and one of Henfield’s closest friends, shared her own story of grief and shattered hope in the hours after the crash. The pair had forged an unbreakable bond over two years, bound by shared loss: Mackey had lost her father years earlier, while Henfield had lost his mother, turning Mother’s Day and Father’s Day into quiet occasions for mutual mourning. When Mackey was forced to jump from her moving car after it caught fire a few months prior, Henfield stayed by her bedside every day throughout her recovery, a reflection of the unconditional loyalty that defined their relationship.

Like Henfield, Mackey shared a deep fear of flying, especially on small propeller aircraft common for inter-island travel in the Bahamas. They established a quiet ritual before any flight: they would pray together before departure, and check in immediately after landing to confirm they were safe. The day of the crash, Henfield called her from the airport as he prepared to board. “I’m about to board, make sure pray and I’ll call you as soon as I reach, but it shouldn’t be long because it’s just a 15 minute flight,” he told her. The call never came.

When Mackey realized her earlier message to Henfield had not gone through and news broke of the crash, panic quickly set in. At first she brushed off the worry, knowing his entertainment work often kept him busy for hours, but as details of the crash spread, she became physically ill with anxiety, pulling off the road to wait for news at her sister’s business. Initial reports suggested one survivor, and for a few moments, Mackey allowed herself to hope it was Henfield. She began planning to nurse him through recovery, just as he had done for her after her car fire. “I never been so excited to just cater to someone,” she said. “They say he has some burns, but what is burns to me? Absolutely nothing.” But that hope was short-lived; minutes later, she overheard her sister confirming Henfield had not survived, and her grief came flooding back.

Mackey recalled a prior incident that underscored just how intense Henfield’s fear of flying was: on an earlier Bahamasair flight, he demanded the plane be evacuated after hearing reports of pre-departure mechanical issues, refusing to stay on board even when crew told him opening the door would require hours of delays and regulatory paperwork. The entire plane was eventually evacuated, just as he demanded. “We have some people that do not like plane, and he didn’t,” she said. “He did not like plane at all.” Still, she finds small comfort in knowing he prayed before boarding the fateful flight, just as their ritual required. Henfield, she remembered, was an exceptional father, a loyal friend, a man of deep faith, and a presence that could light up any room he entered.

Henfield was one of 10 people who lost their lives in the Independence Day crash near San Andros Airport, a tragedy that has left the Bahamas’ tight-knit entertainment and faith communities grappling with the loss of one of their most beloved members.