I thought I was going to be an orphan
A nine-year-old girl whose mother was injured during the Harbour Nights stampede described how she watched blood pouring down her face and feared the worst.
Sophia Shanks, whose mum Barbie is a single parent, told The Royal Gazette: “Since I don’t have a dad I was pretty worried about my mum. I saw all this blood streaming down her face and I thought she was bleeding from her cheeks and chin but it was her nose and lip.
“It was a terrible sight for me because I saw this person with all this blood on their face and it didn’t look like her. I was screaming and crying at the same time.”
Nineteen people were injured when a pair of horses got spooked and broke away from their owner and careered down Front Street, dragging their carriage.
The animals ploughed into a crowd of people, many of whom got trapped under the carriage.
Ms Shanks got separated from her daughter momentarily in the ensuing chaos. When they were reunited seconds later — after Ms Shanks was struck in the face by a wheel on the runaway vehicle — she said Sophia told her: “I thought I was going to be an orphan.”
Ms Shanks, of Devonshire, said: “Sophia got pushed to the ground and she felt like she was being trampled. She was pretty distressed about the whole thing. I was pushing and shoving ‘get out of my way, where’s my daughter?’.
“The minute I saw her — I had been a panicking, screaming mother — I then absolutely broke down and I couldn’t stop crying. She wasn’t seriously injured and with the relief and the emotion at one point I almost passed out.”
Ms Shanks’ facial injuries were caused as she searched under the moving carriage — where some casualties were trapped — for her daughter. A wheel struck her nose, driving her glasses into her face.
She was taken to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in an ambulance, and needed butterfly stitches in her nose. Sophia followed her to the emergency room, accompanied by a woman who grabbed her during the melee after seeing she was alone.
The Bermuda High School student was unharmed except for a sore leg but has had nightmares since.
Ms Shanks, who works in advertising, said she was indebted to Debbie Martin, the Good Samaritan, for helping. “I guess it’s that mother instinct. Apparently she (Debbie) grabbed Sophia so hard she thought she might have hurt her.”
She also praised the emergency workers and off-duty nurses and doctors in the crowd who rushed to help the injured. “They were the strangers who helped strangers, the ordinary who became heroes and the angels among us,” she said.
Sophia, a member of St. John’s Youth Choir, was at Harbour Nights to see the choir perform. Another of the victims — a seven-year-old boy who suffered a broken collarbone — was there to watch his percussionist older brother, according to choir director Marjorie Pettitt.
She described seeing the boy after he was injured.
“The little one was lying in the road,” she said. “He had been hit. He was just stunned and he had a graze on his head. His mother was with him. She was very, very calm. I stayed with the elder son until he calmed down.”
Meanwhile, the niece of the most seriously injured during Wednesday evening’s popular tourist event has thanked hospital medics looking after her. Lucille Moniz broke both arms and one leg, and suffered a badly damaged ear, when she was hit by the runaway horses and their carriage.
Ms Moniz, believed to be a Bermuda-born senior, is the only one to remain in hospital.
According to her niece June Hassell, Ms Moniz was visiting her from her current home in the States when she got caught up in the drama.
“Everyone at the hospital has been really wonderful — the nurses and the orderlies — and the service and care has been excellent” said Ms Hassell, in a statement issued through a hospital spokeswoman.
Ms Moniz has undergone surgery for her injuries, and will need another operation. Her son was due to arrive from the USA yesterday.
Yesterday the Ministry of Public Safety and the Police both said that there was no update on the investigation into the stampede.
But Hamilton Mayor Sutherland Madeiros said it should not be difficult to get to the bottom of what caused it since there were so many witnesses. “There is so much information to put together,” he said. “I still don’t know the cause but the Police probably do know. Enough people saw it that I believe the Police will have a very accurate description of what happened.”
He described it as “strange” that all the closed-circuit television cameras on Front Street, which are monitored by Police, were pointing away from the incident, but added: “It happened so fast. It’s pretty difficult to capture every single thing that might happen in the city. They are pretty effective if they are monitored. I think the monitoring of them, we could do a better job.”
