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J’can woman on shopping trip dies in Panamanian jail
The Jamaican woman who died in a Panamanian women's prison left behind a husband and four children, two of them under 10-years old.
RJR News managed to track down the distraught husband, who claims he had no idea his wife was in jail.
Owen Blair, a ‘higgler', heard the news of his wife's death from one of her cellmates in Panama's Centro Femenino.
Mr. Blair said his wife, Donna Tyrell-Blair, 39, sounded fine the last time he spoke with her on Saturday night, but by Sunday night she was dead.
She had been complaining of shortness of breath and told him to take care of her kids if she did not make it.
But this was not the really shocking news his wife delivered on the weekend.
Her real revelation during that phone call was that she was not just shopping in Panama, but had been locked up in a Panamanian jail for drug trafficking.
"She called me and said to me, Brownman mi sick you know and I went to the hospital but I still don't feel well. So I asked her where she was and she asked me if I knew that they caught her with drugs," said Mr. Blair.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Left to buy goods for shop </span>
According to him, his wife left Jamaica three weeks ago to buy stock for a shop they had just opened.
He spoke to her often via a new cell phone number, likely a contraband one inside the prison, as his wife tried to keep her incarceration a secret.
"She said she never went to court and told me to take care of the baby. She left two babies on me," he said.
Mr. Blair is still awaiting official confirmation from Panama about his wife.
Donna Blair collapsed in a cell at the Centro Femenino prison and died early Sunday morning, several hours after her Jamaican cellmates begged prison employees to provide medical assistance after the woman complained of feeling ill.
One of the Jamaican inmates claimed that their pleas fell on deaf ears, although Mrs. Blair had been ill enough to be taken to hospital Saturday night.
She got worse after she was brought back to the jail and her cellmates say when prison officials finally responded it was too late.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Her husband has not found a way to tell their children that their mother, who was supposed to be on a shopping trip in Panama, died in one of that country's prisons.</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">He himself is still recovering from gunshot wounds he received a few weeks ago.</span>
The Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman confirmed the death and is awaiting the autopsy and final report on the incident from the Panamanian Authorities.
The Jamaican woman who died in a Panamanian women's prison left behind a husband and four children, two of them under 10-years old.
RJR News managed to track down the distraught husband, who claims he had no idea his wife was in jail.
Owen Blair, a ‘higgler', heard the news of his wife's death from one of her cellmates in Panama's Centro Femenino.
Mr. Blair said his wife, Donna Tyrell-Blair, 39, sounded fine the last time he spoke with her on Saturday night, but by Sunday night she was dead.
She had been complaining of shortness of breath and told him to take care of her kids if she did not make it.
But this was not the really shocking news his wife delivered on the weekend.
Her real revelation during that phone call was that she was not just shopping in Panama, but had been locked up in a Panamanian jail for drug trafficking.
"She called me and said to me, Brownman mi sick you know and I went to the hospital but I still don't feel well. So I asked her where she was and she asked me if I knew that they caught her with drugs," said Mr. Blair.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Left to buy goods for shop </span>
According to him, his wife left Jamaica three weeks ago to buy stock for a shop they had just opened.
He spoke to her often via a new cell phone number, likely a contraband one inside the prison, as his wife tried to keep her incarceration a secret.
"She said she never went to court and told me to take care of the baby. She left two babies on me," he said.
Mr. Blair is still awaiting official confirmation from Panama about his wife.
Donna Blair collapsed in a cell at the Centro Femenino prison and died early Sunday morning, several hours after her Jamaican cellmates begged prison employees to provide medical assistance after the woman complained of feeling ill.
One of the Jamaican inmates claimed that their pleas fell on deaf ears, although Mrs. Blair had been ill enough to be taken to hospital Saturday night.
She got worse after she was brought back to the jail and her cellmates say when prison officials finally responded it was too late.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Her husband has not found a way to tell their children that their mother, who was supposed to be on a shopping trip in Panama, died in one of that country's prisons.</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">He himself is still recovering from gunshot wounds he received a few weeks ago.</span>
The Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman confirmed the death and is awaiting the autopsy and final report on the incident from the Panamanian Authorities.
weh half pint call it? gun fever
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