Dedication

To my brother Dave: You were more loved than you ever knew, and I will never stop fighting for the justice you deserved.

Nine years ago on April 2016, my youngest brother Dave, a disabled Navy veteran, and only 52 years old at the time, traveled to Jamaica. After years of struggling with his health, Dave was hoping to find healing, but only a couple days after he arrived in Jamaica, tragedy struck. On April 26, 2016, Dave died in a foreign hospital, far from the people who loved him most. This is the story of my desperate fight to save him—and my ongoing search for truth and justice in his memory.

 

In the spring of 2016, my brother Dave made a decision he believed would change his life. At 52 years old, a disabled Navy veteran living with the painful consequences of diabetes, he traveled to Montego Bay, Jamaica. Dave had recently undergone a toe amputation, and he needed time to heal, to breathe, to believe in a second chance. He arranged to stay with Roy, a Jamaican taxi driver he and his ex-wife Michele had befriended years earlier. Roy had offered him a place to recuperate, and in his heart, Dave truly believed he could get his life back on track.

Just days after arriving, everything fell apart. Roy called to tell me Dave had been rushed to Cornwall Regional Hospital after suffering an apparent stroke. I immediately knew this was serious—Dave’s health was too fragile, and the hospital conditions Roy described sounded terrifying. Overcrowded, chaotic, understaffed—it was no place for someone in Dave’s condition. Bob and I immediately made travel arrangements to go to Montego Bay to get Dave and bring him home.

As we were getting ready to go to the airport, I received a call, informing me that Dave‘s condition had worsened, and an emergency medical transport had to be arranged. From the moment I got the call, I fought with everything I had to bring Dave home. The doctors at the hospital admitted they couldn’t perform the critical procedure he needed. His only chance was to be transferred to a hospital in the United States. About noon that day, after countless frantic phone calls, I arranged for an emergency air ambulance through a company called EMed Jamaica. I authorized the transaction to be charged to my credit card and Tom’s, splitting the $17,000 cost between us. Saving Dave was the only thing that mattered.

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, I called EMed repeatedly, questioning why there were so many delays. Every answer I received was vague—excuses about missing equipment or last-minute logistics—but no real action. Dave remained trapped in that hospital, his condition worsening, while I sat at home clinging to the last fragile threads of hope. 

I kept thinking about the last conversation I had with Dave just the day before. His voice had been so faint, so tired, but still filled with love. “Love you… Laur… need your hugs,” he had whispered. I had promised him I was coming. I truly believed I would reach him in time.

Late that night, the phone rang, shattering the silence of the house. The sound startled me so badly that Bob woke up too. When I saw Roy’s name on the screen, dread filled every inch of my body. I answered, and within seconds, my worst fear became reality. Roy, through choked sobs, told me that Dave was dead. He hadn’t made it to the airport. He hadn’t made it home.

Still clinging to the tiniest hope that this was all a horrible misunderstanding, I called the doctor at EMed Jamaica. His voice, cold and indifferent, confirmed it without hesitation: Dave had died an hour earlier. It was bApril 26, 2016.

It felt as if the world stopped turning. I sat frozen, unable to process the enormity of what had just happened. I had fought so hard, tried to move mountains to save him, and still, I had failed. Dave—our Dave—was dead.

What came next was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I had to call my family. I had to pick up the phone, again and again, and tell my two sisters and two other brothers that Dave was gone. Each call was like reopening a wound that would never heal. I could hear the shock, the heartbreak, the disbelief in their voices, and every time I said the words, it felt like I was tearing my own heart apart a little more. 

“The youngest of us, gone before his time. Love demands justice.”

Dave was the youngest of us six. The one who brought laughter into every room. The one who called every day just to check in, to remind us he loved us. He should have been the last to die, not the first. It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t. He was supposed to have more time. We were supposed to have more time. And the worst goal was yet to come. Dave son David, Jr. had to be notified. That would have to wait until morning because that point I had had about all I could bear.

The memories of Dave flooded me in those dark hours—his stubbornness, his humor, the way he could make you laugh even when you didn’t want to. And alongside the grief, the guilt settled deep inside me. Had I trusted the wrong people? Had I moved fast enough? Had I done everything I possibly could?

At first, the tears refused to come. I was numb, suspended in a place between shock and sorrow. It wasn’t until exhaustion finally overtook me that the tears finally broke free, soaking the pillow beneath my head as I slept.

Morning didn’t bring comfort. It brought sharper doubts, deeper fears. Why so many delays? Why so many broken promises? The more I thought about it, the clearer it became: this wasn’t just a heartbreaking loss. It was a betrayal.

Dave’s death wasn’t inevitable. Somewhere along the way, the system failed him. People failed him.

And so began another fight—a fight not just to mourn him, but to tell his story. To demand the truth. To seek the justice he deserved.