Rasbert Turner, Gleaner Writer

Karen Elliot and four of her five children shelter at the Old Harbour Bay community centre in St Catherine weeks after Hurricane Dean. - file

Spanish Town, St Catherine:

A mother's dream to be reunited with her five children has been shattered.

The woman in question, Karen Elliot of Old Harbour Bay, St Catherine, died Wednesday, almost a year after the Child Development Agency (CDA), in response to the poor conditions under which her children were forced to live after the passage of Hurricane Dean, took them into its care. She reportedly never recovered from the shock.

In January, after her plight was featured in The Gleaner, Elliot was given a plot of land to live on in the Bourkfield Development, outside Old Harbour Bay.

However, the house that was to be erected on the property by the Ministry of Water and Housing had not yet come on stream at the time of her death.

"A feel like if a don't get back mi children dem, I am not going to make it," the saddened mother told The Gleaner in July. "Each time I eat something, I am seeing them before me, and is like something else is cutting my stomach."

She became ill and was in and out of hospital up until her death.

In October last year, The Gleaner found Elliott and her five children - ages 10 months to eight years old - living in squalid conditions at the Old Harbour Bay Community Centre.

The CDA had planned to hand her children back over to her after their new home was constructed, and was actively pushing for its completion.