Badly broken but alive - Easington Bridge survivor speaks after horror fall

Many believed he was dead. Few thought he could have survived such a fall. But nearly six months after his brush with death, Cephas Johnson is still around to tell the tale.

Just days after Hurricane Melissa battered sections of the island last October, Johnson, 46, plunged from the Easington Bridge in the dead of night.

He stared death in the eyes.

"Me see death more than life," he told THE WEEKEND STAR as he returned to the spot where firefighters and residents performed a Herculean rescue effort on the dreaded night.

"I could have been dead, a just never my time, mi could ah really dead," he said.

His survival story carries even greater weight following the tragic death of 90-year-old Raphael Bryan, who fell at the same location on April 3.

In a painful twist of fate, Johnson would later meet one of the men who helped rescue him--Bryan's son, Isaac--while visiting the grieving family with THE WEEKEND STAR. The two men exchanged a firm handshake and Johnson offered his condolences.

Recounting the night of his fall, Johnson said he had left his farm in Albion, a community located just outside Yallahs in the western end of the parish. He had stayed there during the hurricane, and was heading to check on his family home in Bransbury. It was a route he had not travelled in months, and he had no idea the bridge had been compromised.

Approaching close to midnight, he noticed a small heap of sand at the entrance but was not alarmed.

There were no other barriers, no warning signs--nothing to indicate the danger ahead. The area was frequently used by trucks, and he assumed it was a routine spillage. He stopped briefly, saw nothing unusual, and continued on his bicycle.

"Mi think is truck empty off sand there or break down. ... when I reach I never see a blockage or red tape, mi never know about any hole. I couldn't see it in the night and I was carrying my flashlight," Johnson said.

He proceeded across the bridge, which spans the Yallahs River. Seconds later, he vanished.

"By the time mi reach the end of the bridge, mi just disappear inna one hole," he recalled.

The fall was sudden and violent.

"Mi couldn't get away from that hole or the fall," he shared describing the seconds life flashed before his eyes.

He landed on rocks below, badly injured and unable to move. For what felt like 20 minutes, he shouted for help into the darkness, unsure if anyone would hear him.

Eventually, a nearby resident raised an alarm, and Johnson used his flashlight to signal rescuers.

Miraculously, he survived what he was later told was a drop of roughly 60 feet.

"To how me drop, and me see the feeling, me see death more than life. So when I recover I give thanks because a death me see more. Mi never know me could recover," he said.

Now using crutches to aid his walking, Johnson bears the physical reminders of that night--a shattered knee reinforced with metal, a spinal injury, a broken jaw, missing teeth, and scars across his face where stitches once held his skin together.

"It going to take a time for me to recover to how serious the injuries are, but I just give thanks for life," he said.

The ordeal has also taken a toll on his livelihood. Once a farmer who raised pigs, Johnson has been unable to return to work.

"Believe me it stress me out," he said.

As he stood by the bridge on Wednesday, gazing at the spot from which he was rescued, several passers-by stopped to make sure they weren't seeing a ghost.

"Mi hear seh you did dead," commented Gregory Williams, a truck driver from Easington.

Another said: "Mi shock fi see you. Mi hear seh you dead man."

Looking down at the rocky riverbed below, Johnson said he now fully understands how close he came to dying. Pointing to a large boulder near the base of the bridge, he explained that it was the very spot that held him steady and kept him alive until help arrived.

Still, he admitted there was a moment when he nearly gave up.

"Mi did feel like mi a guh give up if help never come, because mi did a try help miself. But if mi did move, maybe mi would lose mi life. When mi look pon it now and see weh the water deh, mi coulda slide weh and disappear," he said.

Despite surviving, Johnson said many people had already written him off. In fact, news of his 'demise' spread quickly. His sister, Marie Murray, was told that her brother fell from the bridge and died.

"I get up same time and say, 'Jesus Christ, mi one brother dead now!'"

She said when she saw him at the hospital, he was barely recognisable.

"Mi see bare blood and swelling," she said.

Given the extent of his injuries, she said she never believed he would be alive today, recalling that doctors had indicated his condition was critical but urged him to place his faith in God as he fought to pull through.

She added that the erroneous news of Johnson's demise may have triggered another tragedy within the family.

"When him brother hear, him drop down same place at the pig pen and die," he said.

Johnson spent a month recovering in hospital but was later able to attend his brother's funeral in Portland. He is unwilling to accept that his near-death episode played a role in his brother's sudden death.

Back in St Thomas, Murray's heart aches for the Bryan family.

"Mi nuh know the little old man and me feel it," she said, adding that other persons continue to use the bridge. She fears they may be the next victims.

For Johnson, Bryan's death has only intensified the trauma. He believes the elderly man's life could have been spared, insisting that proper safety measures should have been put in place after his own fall.

"I feel hurt about that old man, him should never die deh suh, because from mi drop dem should have blocked it off. Them should have blocked off the bridge more properly," he said, but as he hopped away on crutch and looked down at the fall, he shook his head.

"It's a wicked fall," he said quietly.