The Tribune

By LETRE SWEETING

Tribune Staff Reporter

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

THE last time Jonathan Stuart saw his daughter, Princess Stuart Mills, she kissed him on his cheek and told him she’d see him soon.

Neither of them imagined that that ordinary encounter would be the last time they would see each other.

The 50-year-old Mills was killed in a boating accident while travelling to her home on Moore’s Island on Thursday.

According to police, shortly before 2am, a woman and a 19-year-old man left McClean’s Town onboard a 20ft Grady-White boat for Moore’s Island, Abaco. They never reached their destination.

BASRA, along with the police marine unit and a private airline, tried to find them. Their capsized vessel was eventually spotted near Abaco. The man was seen hanging onto the boat for safety and the body of the woman was seen floating in the water.

Both victims were retrieved and taken to the hospital in Grand Bahama where the woman was pronounced dead. The man had no serious injuries.

Mr Stuart recounted the last time he saw his daughter on Thursday evening.

“She kissed me and said, ‘Daddy I’ll see you when you get home’,” he said.

Mr Stuart said his daughter was a Christian woman who supported her family despite several setbacks in life and was deeply loved by the community on Moore’s Island.

“She used to preach, and she was a church-going woman,” he said. “She was a child of God. She used to go all over Marsh Harbour, Eleuthera, Freeport preaching.

“She used to live in Marsh Harbour. She came home after the hurricane. The house where she used to live was destroyed by the last hurricane that passed. She came home to take over the family business.

“We’re going to miss her man, she’s going to be real missed. Everybody really loved her. We’re really going to miss her in the business, because she came in and take over the business for the past two years.

“She had just went over to do some shopping and come back, bringing a load of supplies back for the shop, you know, and then this incident just happened you know.”

On Thursday, Mrs Mills was in Freeport for a church service. Mr Stuart said his daughter had called ahead for a ferry boat to take her home to her husband and son on Moore’s Island, Abaco, for the Easter holiday following the service.

“She went (to Freeport) to do a dance then she started preaching before she did the dance at the church,” he said.

That afternoon, Mr Stuart met his daughter on the dock in McClean’s Town to help her load the boat with her belongings.

“She called this guy with this boat. She always used him, you know to pick her up in McClean’s Town and he (arrived) that afternoon,” he said.

“We put all the cargo and stuff in the boat. She had some supplies that she bought and they left about 20 minutes after dark Thursday evening.”

Mr Stuart said he got worried when her family hadn’t heard anything from her after 10 o’clock that night.

“After 10pm that night, my son called me. He said, Princess hasn’t arrived yet. And I said, ‘Well I don’t know something could be wrong.

“They should’ve been there already.”

Mr Stuart said his son as well as other persons from the island went out to look for her but didn’t find her. At this point Mr Stuart decided to call a pilot he knew who was travelling in the area.

“I called him and asked him to keep a look out. Around about 9:30am, he called me and told me he spotted the boat with two people on the top of it,” he said.

Mr Stuart said he soon learned his daughter was unresponsive when retrieved from the water.

“He went there and he picked them up and he said my daughter was unresponsive when they put her in the boat,” he said. “I was in Freeport at that time and they brought them straight down to Freeport and they took her straight to hospital and then the morgue.

“The doctor came down from High Rock and announced the body lifeless. And that was all. I haven’t seen the body since. Her husband is in Freeport, I guess he is waiting to see the body too,” Mr Stuart said.