IN JAMAICA: Deadly date dad can't forget. Two daughters die Jan 4, 20 years apart.

BY RACQUEL PORTER Observer staff reporter porterr@jamaicaobserver.com  Tuesday, January 14, 2020

If there was a date Hugo Lewis could skip, it would be January 4.

Nine-year-old Nayalia Lewis died from dengue fever
on January 4, 2020, exactly 20 years after her
three-month-old sister Tori-Ann passed away.

Twenty years ago, on that date, Lewis's first daughter, Tori-Ann, died at three months old. Two Saturdays ago, his third daughter, nine-year-old Nayalia, died.

“I hate speaking about this date,” the distraught father told the Jamaica Observer recently.

Scratching his head as he sat inside the Supreme Court photocopying room during his lunch break, Lewis moved his hands quickly to his face as he fought hard to hold back tears.

In addition to the two girls who have passed on, Lewis, who is 39, fathered three other children — two boys and a third girl named Naja.

“I love all of my children, but Nayalia and Naja are like my backbone, because they keep me going. “I have two boys, yes; they are there to carry on the name. The girls, I have to guide them and bond with them. If I turn left, I see one; if I turn right, I see one. Coming from work Nayalia would be the one to come running. She was always waiting on me to make sure I come home. After she see me, then she would go to her granny,” he said.

Disclosing that Naja, 12, has a physical disability, Lewis pointed out that even though Nayalia was only nine years old, she was protective of her older sister. more