By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Staff Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

A 17-year-old boy drowned in the ocean. A 30-year-old woman died in a car crash with police rushing to save him. Their deaths, hours apart but tragically intertwined, left two families in the same community grieving and a town searching for answers over the Mother’s Day weekend.

Sanders Joseph, a high school senior just weeks from graduation, went swimming Saturday afternoon with a friend in rough waters off Bay Shore Road. Only one of them came back alive. As police responded to frantic 911 calls from the rocks near Sunset Village, their patrol unit collided with another car on Queen’s Highway. Inside was Althea Lashanda Mitchell, a beloved daughter on her way home from work.

Sanders’ uncle, Mark Anthony, had been working nearby when someone told him a boy had gone missing in the sea. His heart sank.

“I was shocked when I found out about it,” he said. “He was a good boy, and I have been taking care of him. He was supposed to graduate in June.”

The 17-year-old was raised from infancy by his aunt after his mother left The Bahamas. He was a quiet, respectful teenager who spent weekends doing odd jobs with his uncle and cousin, who was also his closest friend.

“He usually wake me up every morning on Saturdays and Sundays and say, ‘Excuse me, Mark, you have something to do?’ And I would carry him and my son out to work with me and put a little something in their pocket,” said Mr Anthony.

His aunt last saw him Saturday morning before she left for work.

“He is my sister’s son. He was here since he born. I feel bad because she leave him in my care and I take care of him like my own,” she said. “Yesterday morning, I wake him up and I talk to him and he go inside and lay down. I go to work, and after 3 I hear he went in the sea. He never come back.”

Sanders and his friend had entered the water sometime after 2pm, despite high winds and strong currents that made conditions dangerous. According to relatives, they usually swam at safer locations and knew to avoid that stretch of coast.

“The water was so rough... that ain’t no time to jump in the water,” his uncle said. “That was in the wrong spot.”

Community member Leaven McIntosh, a father himself, rushed to the scene when he heard a teenager was missing. Fearing his own son might be involved, he grabbed his diving gear and entered the water.

“I was just praying as I dived,” he said. “Lord, please let me see if I could find this young man.”

He found Sanders, partially submerged, and carried him back to shore.

“I just wrapped my hands around him and came up to the top,” he said. “I just wanted to bring closure to the family.”

Meanwhile, just miles away, the search for Sanders had already claimed another life.

Althea Lashanda Mitchell, 30, was driving home from her job at a tour company in West Grand Bahama when her car was struck by a police unit responding to the drowning. The impact crushed her vehicle. It took firefighters hours to free her body using the ‘jaws of life.’

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Right now, I am not coping too well, but I am trying my best,” said her mother, Deborah Mitchell, at the family’s home. “I have pressure and I am not well. She is my baby.”

Althea, the youngest of three siblings, was remembered for her ambition, her generosity, and the way she tried to lift the spirits of her ailing mother.

“Every time she come home, she come straight in my room and stand in the front of my mirror and dance for me, to cheer me up,” her mother said. “When I talk about it too much, my chest aches.”

She held two jobs and was in the process of launching a beauty esthetics business. After completing studies at Terreve College and earning certification as a Body Contour Esthetician, she had begun planning the opening of VSOP Beauty Esthetics.

“Althea was very educated and smart, she was a go-getter,” said her cousin, Shaquel Thomas. “She had two jobs and she was just always making the next move to better her life. She would always talk about bettering her family.”

Her aunt, Gloria Pratt, broke down as she spoke.

“That’s my niece... we were real close. My whole soul hurts right now. That’s just the impact she had on everybody’s life. She had a good heart.”

The family expressed deep frustration over the emergency response. They said Althea remained pinned in the wreckage for nearly five hours before her body was recovered.