Tragedy has struck the Arthur fam­i­ly of De­laford, To­ba­go, for a sec­ond time in the space of one month.

Mere days af­ter at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al of his aunt Tere­sa Al­leyne-Adams and her hus­band, fire­fight­er Chris­t­ian Adams, who per­ished in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent on May 18, Tere­sa’s nephew, 24-year-old Justin Arthur drowned while bathing at the Ar­gyle wa­ter­fall on Tues­day.

His pass­ing came two days be­fore he was due to re­turn home to Eng­land on June 8.

He had come to To­ba­go to at­tend the Adams’ fu­ner­al ser­vice on June 1 and stayed on to spend time with his girl­friend, who was al­so vis­it­ing from Eng­land.

Tues­day was to be a spe­cial day for the cou­ple, as June 6 marked the first year of their re­la­tion­ship.

How­ev­er, a day which was sup­posed to be a mem­o­rable one turned trag­ic dur­ing their out­ing to the wa­ter­fall.

Justin’s cousin, Kees Arthur, had tak­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing he had a grand time in To­ba­go on his first vis­it in close to ten years. Al­though born in To­ba­go, Justin had lived in Eng­land with his moth­er since the age of eight years.

Kees’ fa­ther, Rawle Arthur, told Guardian Me­dia that Kees took pride in tak­ing the cou­ple around the is­land.

“My son went to Eng­land about a month ago and spent a week­end with Justin and he was so over­whelmed with the treat­ment be­cause Justin took him all around (Lon­don). He was so sat­is­fied with the treat­ment that he felt com­pelled to re­turn back (the hos­pi­tal­i­ty), though in un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances. My son has been tak­ing them out every day,” Rawle Arthur said yes­ter­day

He said his son, who al­so col­lapsed on the scene and had to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal, has been un­der­stand­ably dis­traught since Justin’s death.

“He was stretchered out and tak­en to Ca­su­al­ty. My son was in Ca­su­al­ty for a few hours. He has re­cov­ered. He has been sta­bilised but he still can­not deal with it be­cause he still tak­ing some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the even­tu­al­i­ty.”

Rawle, who re­sides at Bon Ac­cord, said the fam­i­ly was still mourn­ing over the loss of Tere­sa and her hus­band and Justin’s vis­it was help­ing them re­cov­er in a way un­til the tragedy struck.

“Justin seem to have been loved by every­body. Every­body missed him and we were go­ing out of our way to en­sure he had the best time. So, you could imag­ine every­body is emo­tion­al­ly drained at this point in time.”

Justin is al­so the great-nephew of Rev­erend Ver­non Arthur.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Arthur was swim­ming with his girl­friend and an­oth­er rel­a­tive at the wa­ter­fall around 3 pm when he got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty.

Emer­gency re­spon­ders were called to the scene but could not re­trieve him and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) team was called in. A team of TEMA per­son­nel and divers even­tu­al­ly re­trieved the body. Arthur was pro­nounced dead at the scene. — Re­port­ing by Clay­ton Clarke