The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE uncle who promised he would not stop searching for 15-year-old Jayden Ferguson found the boy’s body on a Harbour Island beach yesterday, days after the teenager disappeared in rough seas at Pink Sands Beach.

“I promise myself I would find him. I wasn’t giving up,” Henry Solomon, Jayden’s uncle and godfather, said. “I keep trying to look, keep looking every day.”

Jayden, a tenth grader at Harbour Island All Age School, disappeared on Sunday after he and another teenage boy got into difficulties while swimming. The other boy made it back to shore, but Jayden was not seen again.

Mr Solomon said Jayden’s mother was traumatised. Jayden was her oldest child and leaves behind two younger siblings.

Jayden had told his mother around 4pm that day that he was going to study with a friend, Mr Solomon said, and the family did not expect him to be at the beach.

“He tell his mom he went to study, but I don’t know what’s going on that got them to go on the beach,” he said. “To get to that stage of 15-years-old and for it to just get taken away, It was rough.”

When Jayden had not returned by around 6pm, his family became worried and began calling him. A resident later told them something had gone wrong. They rushed to the beach, where they found his clothes but could not find him.

Mr Solomon, who is self-employed and helped organise the search, said he had not slept since Sunday. As a senior member of the family, he said, he felt responsible for leading the effort, and each night after other searchers had left the site he got up and went looking again.

He walked the entire length of the beach until midnight on Monday before returning to keep searching, and asked friends to help comb the shoreline, giving them money to buy drinks as they looked.

Police also deployed teams and vessels, but the operation was suspended twice because of severe weather.

After 4.30am yesterday, a bystander called Mr Solomon to say something that looked like a human body was floating in the water. He said he got up around 5.30am, woke his workers and neighbours, and went to the beach, where he found Jayden. Police said concerned residents alerted them to the discovery shortly after 7am.

Mr Solomon described his nephew, an aspiring entrepreneur, as a good kid. The two had worked together every summer for the past two years.

Jayden’s routine was usually to go from school to home, Mr Solomon said, although he sometimes went to the basketball court and liked to help around the community.

“He don’t like to be home. If he ain’t doing the school work, he’s one who like go around me work,” Mr Solomon said. “If I don’t have no work for him, he asks the neighbours ‘Can I come work with you? Clean up the yard with you?’ He’s just a talented boy.”

He said Jayden’s death was another blow for a family still grieving the loss of Jayden’s aunt two years ago. Additionaly, his own eldest daughter was shot on Harbour Island last year but is recovering, he said.

Harbour Island All Age School reportedly closed early after news of Jayden’s death spread.

Cordesha Cartwright, 17, the school’s head girl, who had known Jayden for three years, said he was creative and athletic and often spoke about wanting to become a barber.

“He was such a sweet, humble person. Very funny,” she said. “Everybody was close to him in his class. He was like a big brother to everybody.”