By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

ALVETA Russell, 71, the lady who was found dead in a pond in South Ocean Village, was remembered by relatives on Friday as a “giving and honest woman”, who was kind to all who knew her.

“My mummy was very friendly, okay, even as she got older and as her memory (declined), but she still held a regular conversation,” her daughter, who did not want to be named, told The Tribune in an interview on Friday.

“She was very giving to a number of persons, even her friends. She fed herself, bathed herself and everything…I was her only child.”

Acknowledging that her mother sometimes suffered from dementia, her daughter maintained that Ms Russell was still in good health, saying the 71-year-old often cleaned the house and even cooked her own meals.

“She always was in the backyard and I used to say: ‘Mummy, what you doing in the back there?’… and just to set the record straight, she did not have Alzheimer's. When somebody have Alzheimers, they can’t do nothing for themselves. I would’ve never left her there by herself if she could not function,” she said.

“A neighbour had said that my mother had Alzheimers but that was not the truth,” she added.

Ms Russell was reported to police on Monday as missing after she was last seen at her residence in South Ocean Village at 8.30 am.

However, her body was found by police two days later “submerged” in a pond in the community.

Describing the moment she realised her mother was missing, her daughter said: “It was an unsettling feeling… because she looked fine the last time I saw her…I gave her breakfast (that morning) as usual and I left her in the bed and her last words to me was ‘drive safe as usual.’

“When I went in the room, I give her the medication, I turned on the TV to the news and I haven’t turned on the TV since this incident happened and I put on the news and passed it to her and said don’t forget and don’t open the door for anybody. So I did a regimen of things for her in the morning and as I would say it, she would be repeating things exactly.”

After leaving for work, her daughter said she called the house several times to check on her mother, but received no answer.

She said initially she was not alarmed by the situation because her mother sometimes does not answer the phone when she’s occupied in the yard.

She said: “Sometimes she used to be out in the yard when the phone ringing and I would rush off from work and she in the yard and I would say ‘Mummy, I’m calling you’, but she would say, ‘I ain’t hear the phone’ so I thought that was one of those days.”

“I called her after I had my meetings at work. I called her about 13 times, and I said ‘mummy mussy outside in the yard' because it happened before and she was outside in the yard."

“So, I said ‘I ain’t rushing up there’ because every time I rush up there, ain’t nothing to be alarmed. But the day I chose not to come, she most likely needed my assistance. That was the one day I chose not to come, and I was like what happen?’

Speaking at the scene on Wednesday, press liaison officer ASP Audley Peters told reporters that officials were awaiting an autopsy report to determine the cause of death.

However, he said officers did not suspect that foul play was involved.

Asked her thoughts on the matter, Ms Russell’s daughter said she believed her mother accidentally slipped into the pond while strolling in the area.

“I believed she slipped because she’s not a strong swimmer and so I believe she end up slipping and forgetting you could just float on your back until somebody saw you,” she said.

She said the family is saddened by her mother’s death and will deeply miss her.