The Dash Valley, St George community was rocked by another sudden death today with the passing of a man who dedicated most of his life to the service industry.
Hours before Katrina Douglas discovered the lifeless body of her four-month-old baby in her bed, Ian Walters, 61, who lived just a few houses away, died on Black Rock Main Road, St Michael shortly after midnight.
Walters was headed in the direction of Eagle Hall when the car he was driving swerved, went off the road, struck garbage cans and came to rest on a lay by.
Ian Walters
Police said the death was being treated as “unnatural”.
Joining the industry after leaving school at age 18, Walters worked at Sandy Lane, Brown Sugar Restaurant, and Almond Beach among other places, in various leadership capacities, and was the General Manager of Chrystal Waters Beach Bar, Worthing, Christ Church at the time of his death.
Family members and work colleagues said they were shocked at the sudden loss of a man they described as “a genuine person”.
Speaking from her Dash Valley home, his sister Hetterine Walters said that her only comfort at this time of mourning came through prayer.
“I was praying from the time I went get the call and went to the scene and saw that car, because I didn’t see him.
“I praying all now. He was the best. Everything that was good, he was. I don’t think anybody would say differently,” Walters said of her deceased brother.
She said loved ones, and those who called the family to express their condolences, were “shattered” and struggling to cope with the death.
The sister said she last saw her brother a few hours before the accident, at a barbeque in St Philip, and that they joked with each other just before he left to take some friends home.
“To be honest, the last thing I said to him was ‘you asking everybody how them getting home and you didn’t even ask me.’ He said to me, ‘I didn’t bring you’.
“Really and truly he didn’t take me. I went up with somebody else. And we just laughed it off because that’s how we are. We have our ups and downs but we are always joking with each other,” she said, speaking as if her brother were still alive.