‘Dumpling’ felt cold hours before deadly crash

Seventeen-year-old Ryan 'Dumpling' Tulloch was restless on the night he left his home in Tawes Meadows, St Catherine, on Friday. Before stepping out, he battled an unexplained chill that made him uneasy.

"Him was in the yard with a few of his friends, but him keep on a bawl say him cold," recalled his father, Barrington Tulloch.

His mother, Sherija Lewis, said her son even changed his mind about leaving home that night because of how he was feeling.

"Mi son a bawl seh him cold from night, and go inna him bed go wrap up and change him mind about the party, but they came and call him out and this was how it end," she said.

Ryan's life was cut short in a motor vehicle crash along the Hellshire main road in St Catherine. Another man, Jehvaughn Martin, from Braeton, Portmore, also perished in the collision.

According to the Constabulary Communications Unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, around 3 a.m. Tulloch was travelling in a Honda Shuttle, while Martin was a passenger in a BMW motor car. Both vehicles were heading in the same direction along the Hellshire roadway when they collided. The impact left both cars mangled, and the occupants were taken to the Spanish Town Hospital, where Tulloch and Martin were pronounced dead.

Barrington Tulloch said the last time he saw his son was shortly after 10 p.m. on Friday. He had gone to bed early, preparing to rise before dawn for his vending job in downtown Kingston. But the news he woke up to was nothing he could have ever imagined.

"Mi get up about to 4 o'clock and a get ready to drive out, but when mi check mi phone mi see bare strange number a call mi," Tulloch shared.

Overcome with grief, he said that when he answered one of the calls, he was told his son had been involved in an accident. Still, he held on to hope.

"When mi hear say mi son involved in a crash, mi pull him door and look, and see seh him never on the bed. Then, mi hear say him unconscious, but mi think him soon come back out of it," he said.

When he arrived at the crash site, the heartbroken father was met with a devastating scene -- his son and Martin lying motionless on the ground amid twisted wreckage. Persons at the scene told him that first responders rushed the other injured persons to the hospital and left his son and Martin.

By Sunday, the crash site still bore grim reminders of the tragedy -- a pair of red Crocs slippers, a single black slipper, a broken concrete utility pole, and mangled car parts stained with blood.

Tulloch's mother, Sherija Lewis, could barely speak through her tears. Her eyes were swollen from crying as she remembered her only child with fondness.

"You would call him and seh, Dumpling, go do this and dat, and him nah tell yuh no. If him pass yuh 15 times him a tell yuh morning or evening," she said.

Ryan, a past student of Spanish Town Comprehensive High, was the eldest of four boys and the apple of his father's eye.

"Di man was a quiet and nice youth, and everybody love him," his father said. "Him nuh too talk, but him love laugh, and him was just a cool humble youth."

Lewis said they were in the process of enrolling Ryan in the HEART Trust/NTA so he could learn a trade.

"We start the paperwork for him to go HEART, but now a funeral we gonna plan instead," the grieving mother said.

According to data from the Island Traffic Authority, approximately 300 people have died in road crashes since the start of the year. Nearly 100 of the victims were under the age of 30, with males accounting for 85 per cent of that figure.

As he mourns his firstborn, Tulloch is pleading with motorists to drive responsibly.

"Mi just a beg the man dem to drive carefully and stop the careless driving because a nuh your life alone you a ramp with," he said.

"Every minute we look we see one bag a accident, and bare road fatalities all bout, and it come like seh the driver dem nah learn or take heed," he added.

The grieving father said he is especially angered by drivers who treat the roads like race tracks.

"It's like if a man nuh feel like him a go certain speed him nah drive. We can't just be selfish and drive for ourselves alone on the road," Tulloch said.