Friend says woman who drowned in pond ‘lost herself trying to help others’
Arnel Medor remembers her friend, Tamara Lamour, as a class clown and peacemaker.
Whenever their close-knit group of friends would get into silly arguments, Lamour would be the one to ask everyone to take a step back, forget about the squabbles and look at the bigger picture.
“We never know when one of us is going to leave each other,” Medor recalled Lamour saying.
Medor, 19, and the rest of their group of friends are now grappling with that reality.
On May 9, a resident near a retention pond off East Colonial Drive called 911 after seeing someone screaming for help, thrashing about in the water. Lamour’s body was found the next morning. She was 19.
The witness originally said he heard Lamour scream, “It bit me,” before she went underwater, prompting a search for alligators in the pond. Her body showed no signs of an alligator attack.
How she ended up in the pond is still unclear. A sheriff’s office spokesman said her death has been ruled an accident, but witnesses said they saw her talking about wanting to harm her-
self near the pond shortly before the 911 call was made.
The Covenant House, a shelter for homeless youth located near the pond where Lamour drowned, confirmed that she was a resident there shortly before her death.
“This is a difficult time for our staff and for our residents here,” said Maria Shorkey, the associate executive director for the shelter. “Right now, our thoughts and prayers go out to Tamara’s family and all of her friends.”
Lamour’s friends said she was so attuned to her loved ones’ issues that she may have been neglecting her own needs.
Yasmin Hill-Sukie, 18, described Lamour as an always-smiling woman who would tell her friends to confront their insecurities and be true to themselves.
“I keep questioning, ‘Why did it come down to this? Why didn’t she reach out to us?’ ” Hill-Sukie said. “It bothers me because I feel like we could’ve done more.”
Medor met Lamour the summer before they went into middle school in Port St. Lucie, where they grew up. Lamour recognized Medor from church and approached her at school, wanting to be her friend, Medor said.
She said Lamour was a selfless person who always placed her friends’ problems before her own. Before some school years, Lamour would ask for donations to buy school supplies for her siblings, Medor said.
Medor recalled a conversation about two years ago, in which Lamour was talking about issues she was having in her personal life. When Medor mentioned she was having problems with a boyfriend, she said Lamour stopped talking about her own challenges to be there for her friend.
“I wish I could go back to that conversation,” Medor said. “She lost herself trying to make everyone else happy. She lost herself trying to help others.”
Lamour’s mother, Shellyne Personnel, couldn’t be reached for comment, but told Spectrum News 13 that she thought her daughter was doing OK.
“I wish she would have called me or sent me a text or something then,” she told the news station. “I would have known something was wrong, and I could’ve gotten some help or something.”
An obituary for Lamour says she was born in Miami and was a “great daughter and a great friend to her mother,” who raised her after her father was deported to Haiti.
One day in February, Lamour was hungry and homeless when she came over to visit Medor in Port St. Lucie. All of the neighborhood moms loved Lamour, and Medor said her mother prepared griot, a Haitian dish with pork shoulders, fried plantains, rice and beans.
It was the last time she saw her friend alive. Lamour said that she wanted to start training to join the Army and left for Orlando shortly thereafter, Medor said.
Now, Medor says she always has her phone nearby in case any of her other friends need to talk.
“I’m not losing any more friends,” she said.