Springfield lays to rest Haitian student whose suicide death followed TPS loss

Pierres Ronal Bel shared that he hasn’t been able to sleep since viewing the body of his son Pierre Damas Bel, who died by suicide after walking in front of a trailer truck.

‘Whenever someone opens the front door, I have the sense that it is him coming home. I live with this illusion that he is coming back one day.’

Bel’s stepmother Landy St. Juste told a congregation that it was thanks to Bel completing a job application for her that she was employed. And, once she got the job, the young man she called ‘Da’ often checked in on her during the day and continued to act as her personal interpreter whenever she needed.

‘Damas left me with this emptiness.’

Pierre Damas Bel’s brother and cousin likewise relayed just how much was a fixture in their lives.

‘You were always there for me whenever I needed someone,’ Theodore Bradley Bel, the brother, shared. ‘You always made me feel like I was never alone. You were someone I could always count on.’

Jennifer Elisé, a cousin with whom Bel grew up in Haiti  before both moved to the U.S., lamented not knowing his state of mind or emotional distress.

‘He was always there for me, but never showed a sign of depression,’ she wrote. ‘I feel so weak and guilty. I wasn’t able to realize he was not okay while he was always showing up for me.’

In another part of her letter, Elisé’s self-blame was evident.

‘Maybe I could have told him something that could have cheered him up and saved him from doing such a thing. I am trying my best to keep going just for him. But I don’t even know what tomorrow is going to be like as an immigrant in this country.’

So went the expressions of pain from the 20-year-old’s death, as read by Rose-Thamar Joseph, a family designee, during a poignant 2-hour funeral service Saturday that drew hundreds, including Gov. Mike DeWine and other officials, and even more viewers online via livestream. 

From the virtual broadcast inside St. John Missionary Baptist Church, leading voices advocating for Haitian immigrants also joined with the family to not only mourn the bright, dedicated young man. Linking the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies – particularly the use of ankle monitors – to Bel’s death, they also called out the United States government for inflicting such “cruelty” on immigrants and urged the hundreds in attendance to reject the current administration.

From the pulpit, the speakers looked upon Bel’s purple-hued casket laid out before then, decorated with a photo of him donning his high school graduation cap and gown.

“Yes, our dear friend and brother might have died by suicide, but he was killed by the system,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which collaborated with Springfield’s Haitian Support Center to plan the funeral service.

Switching from English into Haitian Creole, as many speakers did throughout, Joseph elaborated.

“It’s the laws the government put in place that killed him” she said. “It’s the inhumanity that killed him. In the cruelty, in the taking of dignity – that is what killed him.”