Lone survivor from Lexi crash wants to be happy again
Celia Vernon is finding it difficult to move on after surviving the motor vehicle crash that claimed the life of three persons, including her best friend and popular YouTube vlogger Lexian ‘Lexi D Bess’ Williams.
Vernon, 22, was travelling in a Toyota Mark X motor car on Friday, March 18, when it crashed into a Toyota Voxy along a section of the North Coast Highway in Trelawny about 6:45 p.m. Vernon, Williams and Kenroy Smith, 25, the driver of the Mark X, were heading to Falmouth to pick up a friend for a party at Williams’ home in Rio Bueno, also in Trelawny.
Vernon suffered broken bones in her hip, arm, leg, nose and pelvis, and fractured her neck. But she said the deaths of Williams, Smith and Chris Codner, the Voxy driver, have left her with deep psychological scars.
“I just want to be happy again, that’s all, but that don’t look possible again when you can experience something like that,” Vernon told THE WEEKEND STAR. She said that she and Williams had been friends for five years.
“It started out at school, in nutrition classes, weh wi would just a snap together until wi just turn out to become best friends. We never malice, never cuss, never fight; we never have any disagreement,” she said. Vernon said Williams was a nice person who never let the naysayers bother her.
“She also ha a good heart because if person wanted something from her, she will go out of her way to do it. Me know that ‘bout her! If yuh wah good advice from her, she will give it to yuh, and she will always tell yuh the truth,” Vernon said. She said that two days before the crash, she and Williams lymed and joked at Williams’ home.
“We had so much fun together, and di Thursday she tell me say, ‘Celia, mi love yuh enuh, and if anything do yuh me ago cry.’ The two a wi start laugh and she say, ‘Me serious.’ Same time me tell her say mi woulda cry, too, and it would a tear me up inside if anything fi happen to her. It really do now, ‘cause she gone. Mi nuh know how fi deal wid it, so mi just cry,” she said.
Due to her extensive injuries, Vernon was unable to attend her friend’s funeral.
“I was still recovering from surgery because mi did sick, couldn’t talk, and was vomiting constantly. But I sent a paragraph there to be read. I was shaking on that day and was crying very hard at the hospital. I felt like my heart was giving way. I couldn’t believe it was her funeral,” she said.
Vernon said that she vaguely remembers events from the crash as she was in the back seat. Despite being in constant pain, Vernon said that support from loved ones has made recovery significantly easier.
“I am a little bit better, but sometimes my foot give me a hard time. In the mornings I can’t move, because mi feet dem just feel stiff. Two persons affi lift me up, but by God’s mercy mi a go walk again, enuh. It has been two weeks since I am out of the hospital now. I always believed I was going to leave the hospital after the surgery, but the doctors didn’t want to let me out, because they were concerned about the iron in my foot, because the bone is broken in two. The recovery is slow, but my parents, big sisters and my boyfriend have been there for me right throughout,” she said.
“Mi affi give thanks for life, enuh, but mi best friend dead. It was the best five years of my life with her,” she added.