The first time her phone rang, Lenise Georges didn’t believe the news. Her sister and 1-year-old niece were dead, the caller, another niece, said, explaining that their boat had capsized off the coast of Nassau, Bahamas, and that everyone onboard had died.
“I asked her where she heard the news,” Georges, who has lived in the Bahamas for years, recalled. “But I didn’t believe it because I know that Haitians talk a lot.”
So Georges, who was in church and had temporarily left her seat to take the call, hung up the phone and returned to her worship.
By the time church was out at 1 p.m., Georges’ phone rang at least twice more. Each caller delivered the same news: her sister, Altanie Ivoy, and niece Kourtney Volmyr were dead.
One of the callers, still unable to make Georges believe, forwarded her the images of the dead making the rounds on the WhatsApp social media platform. That’s when Georges finally accepted the unimaginable.
“When I looked, I saw my sister and the child in the photo,” Georges told the Miami Herald. “That’s when I realized she really was dead.”
On Friday, five days after Bahamian authorities were called in the early hours on Sunday to a capsizing involving a Miami-bound 33-foot speedboat ferrying Haitian migrants in the waters off New Providence, officials announced they had identified five of the 17 victims in the tragedy. Ivoy and Kourtney were among them.
Bahamas Commissioner of Police Clayton Fernander also announced that several Bahamian men will be charged in the deaths of the 17 Haitian migrants and an unborn child, after an autopsy revealed that one of the women was pregnant.
“That brings the count to 18 and a number of other charges as it relates to human smuggling,” he said.
During an arraignment Friday afternoon in Nassau in court before Chief Magistrate JoyAnn Ferguson-Pratt, Bahamian authorities charged four individuals with 18 counts of manslaughter and more than a dozen other charges: Donald Watson, McKenzie Jerome, Eulan McKinney and Wilbens Joseph. Watson and McKinney were also charged with reckless operation of a vessel. All were sent to prison and given another court date on Oct. 28.
Fernander said one of the suspects is from the island of Exuma and the other is from Abaco, which may help explain why many of the passengers on the vessel had traveled from other family islands for the deadly voyage.
Watson, who was first identified by the Herald after his arrest, had previously spent time in prison in the U.S. for human smuggling and in Cuba for drug trafficking. He was still on probation when Sunday’s incident happened.
In 2019, Watson was charged with one count of smuggling after officials with the U.S. Border Patrol and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Marine Unit encountered his vessel east of West Palm Beach, Florida. After a pursuit at top speed, the boat ran out of fuel, and Watson, who was captain, was arrested along with Travis Jamaal Moss, an undocumented Bahamian national who had been previously expelled from the U.S.
While officials announced the suspension of a search and recovery operation to find more victims, Fernander said the investigation is ongoing. Agents with Homeland Security Investigations are in the Bahamas assisting and also looking to see if any crimes were committed in the U.S., which means the men could also faces charges in the United States.
Fernander said based on the ongoing investigation, police have confirmed that Sunday’s tragedy was a result of a human smuggling operation that sent as many as 40 migrants into the ocean when the boat hit rough seas after departing from West Bay Street in Nassau in darkness. Twenty-five individuals survived the capsizing and are currently in immigration custody. Authorities are taking steps to revoke the work permits of survivors and deport all of them back to their country of origin.
“The investigation is continuing into this matter because we believe there are some more individuals involved based on our investigation,” Fernander said, adding that there had to be safe houses used in the operation.
Authorities continued to appeal to the community for help in identifying the victims. In addition to Georges’ sister and niece, police have also confirmed the identity of the only man among the dead and two adult females and a 13-year-old girl.
“No one has taken this news well,” said Georges, who last saw her sister in December when she came in from Eleuthera where she had been living for the last five years to help her organize a holiday party.
Anthony Pierre Brutus, the chargé d’affaires at the Haitian Embassy in Nassau, said the government of Haiti will take responsibility of burying the victims in New Providence. The embassy is asking relatives to contact the embassy and provide photos to help them make a positive identification.
Georges, however, said no one has contacted her despite going to the embassy on Monday about the deaths.
“They said they would call me but ever since I went to them on Monday no one has called,” she said. “There is no Haitian government that checks for Haitians here in the Bahamas. We don’t have that in the Bahamas. Right now, I am the one who is doing the funerals.”
More than 30 Haitians have died so far at sea this year in what U.S. Coast Guard officials say is the largest Haitian migration by boat since 2004.
The tragedy in the Bahamas is the first of two this week in which Haitian nationals have lost their lives at sea trying to make the risky voyage to the United States. On Thursday, authorities in Puerto Rico confirmed that five Haitian migrants died when they were forced to swim to the shore of an uninhabited island by their smuggler.
While park rangers from the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources recovered at least five bodies, 66 others — 41 men and 25 women — were rescued. Two minors who survived were also among the passengers.
All 68 survivors were transported to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, on Friday, the Coast Guard said. The agency added that the survivors will likely be returned to their nation of origin.
“While we are glad for the 68 survivors, we cannot lose sight of the fact that five lives were lost as a result of smugglers abandoning these people offshore in the dangerous waters that surround Mona Island,” said Capt. Jose Diaz, the Coast Guard commander in San Juan. “To anyone thinking of taking part in an illegal voyage, we urge you not to take to the seas. Makeshift, unseaworthy vessels often grossly overloaded and unstable with no lifesaving equipment onboard, changing sea-state conditions, hypothermia, dehydration and drowning are just some of the dangers migrants face in these voyages.”
One of the survivors told a Puerto Rico TV station that he was forced to leave Haiti because of gang violence, which has been on the rise in recent weeks. In a statement, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières said its teams at the emergency center in Turgeau in Port-au-Prince have treated almost 80 people with gunshot wounds — mainly from stray bullets — since last weekend.
“This is the result of escalating fighting between armed groups that has spread to new areas of the capital,” the international medical humanitarian organization said Friday. “This most recent wave of violence follows the fighting that broke out in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince earlier this month, leaving thousands of people trapped without drinking water, food, or medical care.”
Both Puerto Rico and the Bahamas have seen a spike in undocumented Haitians trying to reach their shores in hopes of getting to the U.S.
Clayton Watson, Bahamas press secretary, warned that any Haitian seeking to travel to the Bahamas should go to its embassy in Haiti and apply for an entry visa. The Bahamas, he said, will enforce its migration and discourages any other method of entering the country.
“Risking your life is not worth the voyage,” he said.
Bahamian authorities say some of the victims in Sunday’s capsizing had been living in the country for some time and had traveled to New Providence to make the boat trip.
Georges said she has no idea why her sister would take such a risk, although she recalled that Ivoy had mentioned the possibility of leaving because work in the Bahamas was difficult to find.
“She couldn’t pay for her work permits,” Georges said. “She said, ‘If I had money I would leave the country.’ ” But I didn’t think it was a good decision.”
Ivoy was living in the Bahamas with Georges. Two other sisters live in Haiti, where Ivoy also had two older children: an 11-year-old and another child around the age of 18.
“The same day she came to town to take the boat, I had no idea,” said Georges, who lives in Nassau. “I saw a missed call from her and called her back. Up until now I never got a response.”
“I guess I am not going to see her again until she’s ready to be buried.”
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