“The guilt is a heavy burden on me, right now. I feel lost. I can’t sleep. I know people are going to blame me for their deaths. My mind keeps thinking about what happened because they were my good friends and I wouldn’t intentionally harm them,” said Randolph Taylor.
According to Inspector Walter Evans, police liaison officer, a gray Honda Accord driven by Randolph early Tuesday morning, hit a coconut tree and overturned on Queen’s Highway in Burnt Ground, Long Island. The two back-seat passengers, sisters Brigetta and Santura Adderley, were removed from the vehicle and taken to the local clinic, where they were pronounced dead. The two other passengers, Crisilda Rahming and Randolph were airlifted to New Providence for treatment.
The Guardian spoke to Randolph after he was listed in stable condition at the Princess Margaret Hospital on Wednesday. He explained that he does not think he will ever be the same after witnessing the death of his cousins.
“After the accident I crawled out of the car and stood up. I looked underneath the car and saw a person underneath the car; by the looks of her I could have seen that she wasn’t going to make it. So I sat down in the road and was trembling. I don’t think I will ever be the same,” he said.
According to Mrs Maxine Adderley, the mother of the deceased, both of her daughters – Brigetta Adderley, 28, and Santura Adderley, 19 – had so much to live for. Brigetta died on her twenty-eighth birthday, Tuesday, June 6.
However, Mrs Adderley told the Nassau Guardian that she was not going to question God.
She said that Brigetta, the mother of two little girls – a five-year-old and a three-year-old – turned 28 the same morning of her death. And 19-year-old Santura would have celebrated her twentieth birthday in a few weeks.
The girls’ uncle, Oliver Adderley, said the death of the girls sent shock waves through the family.
He believes the accident took place as the girls and two other relatives, Crisilda Rahming, who is in her late teens and Randolph, who is in his early twenties, were retuning home from the Regatta site in Salt Pond, Long Island.
However, Randolph said he and his cousins did not go to the Regatta, but instead went to a dance in Thompson Bay.
“We didn’t go to the Regatta. We went to Thompson Bay to a dance. We were talking and laughing all night, but I was ready to go home about 10 o’clock but the girls kept saying that they weren’t ready to go home yet. So I went to sleep in the car.
They woke me up about an hour and a half later and said they were ready to go so we left,” said Randolph. “The accident took place when we were almost home and right now I still can’t believe this has happened.”
He added that after he is released from the hospital he is going to take the first flight back to Long Island to be with his family.
The Guardian has learnt that Chrisilda had been released from the PMH early on Wednesday afternoon.
By: LASHONNE OUTTEN, The Nassau Guardian
