Sister 2 Sister Magazine Tribute (Stephanie Interview) (2002)

Stephanie Patterson was Lisa's personal assistant. She was there in Honduras when Lisa's accident occurred, but she not in that fatal crash. But during that same stay in was Honduras, Stephanie told $25 that she was driving the vehicle with Lisa and another passenger when a young Honduran boy stepped in front of them and was killed. This accident happened just a few weeks before Lisa's demise. As you read this you'll find that any negative ideas that were reported of how they handled the situation of the young boy's death will be erased. Obviously Stephanie has been traumatized after being affected by two car accidents in a matter of weeks, both resulting in death.

Jamie: How long had you been working with Lisa?

Stephanie: For two years.

Jamie: And you were her assistant? That's what you were called?

Stephanie: Yeah, her personal assistant

Jamie: Okay listen, Stephanie, tell me what was it like in Honduras? I understand that Dr. Sebi, her holistic doctor, said Lisa bought the land and gave it to him.

Stephanie: Well, she purchased some land next door to Dr. Sebi's healing village. She wanted to build on that land.

Jamie: What's the healing village called?

Stephanie: Usha Nutrition Center. However, Dr. Sebi may have changed the name now. He said he was going to change the name of the village after Lisa. He may have done that already. I don't know if he was gonna use LeftEye or N.I.N.A. or Lisa. The last I spoke to him he was getting ready to change the name, but he didn't tell me what name he was gonna use.

Jamie: When was it that you spoke to him?

Stephanie: Maybe four or five days ago.

Jamie: Did he come to the funeral or anything? Uncle Kyle and them said they didn't see him

Stephanie: I didn't see him and I haven't spoken to him since then. I'm not sure if he was there or not.

Jamie: What happened to her property? 

Stephanie: It's still there. I really can't make comments on it because there are some legal things that are happening right now. It's getting ready to to be turned over to the estate.

Jamie: Now Lisa had that property down there. This is my understanding not that you're making a comment on it or anything: I just want to make sure I know what's going on. Lisa had to buy it

in Dr. Sebi's name because she wasn't a citizen and he was. But then he was gonna turn it over to her later on and put it in her name. I know he went on the air in Atlanta last week and said that Lisa had bought all of this property for him. Let me ask you this: So she had that property, then she had a house in Atlanta also, right?

Stephanie: She had two houses in Atlanta. The second house was purchased and a studio was built in it. It was a residential studio facility so artists could actually rent the whole house and stay there instead of going back and forth to the studio and hotel.

Jamie: So she had that house and didn't she have a house in Weehawken, New Jersey?

Stephanie: She had an apartment, but her lease was up before we went to Honduras.

Jamie: Now Andre Rison was staying at her house, right, for a while?

Stephanie: Yes.

Jamie: And he moved out while you all were down in the Honduras?

Stephanie: No, he moved out before. Maybe a month before we went to Honduras.

Jamie: Did you enjoy Honduras, too?

Stephanie: Oh yes.

Jamie: How did you all carry on her business down there? Did you have phones and faxes?

Stephanie: Yes. We had a satellite phone. Most of the business that we had to do we took care of before and anybody that needed to reach us while we were there had the satellite phone number. But everyone that we had pending business with knew that we were gonna be gone for a month. But it wasn't that much going on during that month.

Jamie: Tell me about her foundations.

Stephanie: She participated in the Make a Wish Foundation several years ago. Someone had wanted to go to the prom with her and she went to his high school prom with him. Right before we went to Honduras she became involved in the Lost Boys Foundation. She actually recorded them during the intro to the demo package we submitted for the girls to Dreamworks. So they had actually done some recording already. They sang a spiritual song and played drums and that was the intro in the demo package.

Jamie: So Egypt is signed to Dreamworks already?

Stephanie: No, we had only gotten as far as the demo package. They wanted Lisa to get them in the studio and do a couple of songs so that they could listen and then make a decision whether they were gonna sign the girls or not.

Jamie: Girl, those girls can sing! They sound so beautiful.

Stephanie: Yes, they do. It's very amazing that they got through the whole song.

Jamie: What was the name of that song?

Stephanie: "Thank You." That's a song that Destiny's Child arranged and did. Egypt sang that song to us when we first saw them in person because we were trying to hear how they sounded and that was an a cappella song. They could harmonize and they used that song as an example for us. Lisa and I both thought they sounded so beautiful that we wanted to record them singing that also. It was like an extra song. We were only supposed to turn in three songs to Dreamworks, but we ended up turning in eight.

Jamie: And now tell me about her charities. You told me about Make a Wish.

Stephanie: She also had done a couple of appearances and the money she'd get for the appearances she'd donate it to the September 11th Fund also. Like the Gap commercial she did. That money was sent to September 11th. It was right around the holidays. It was a whole series of commercials with people singing and playing the guitar. That money went to September 11th.

Jamie: About how much are we talking about?

Stephanie: Maybe $5,000 to $7,000.I know she donated funds before to a sickle cell fund.

Jamie: Sickle Cell Anemia? And mostly Lisa would take people in, right? That's how she would help a lot of folks, adopt them and all that. What about Jamall? What was the name of his group?

Stephanie: Illegal.

Jamie: Right. And Jamall, she adopted him, right?

Stephanie: Not legally. I wasn't with her at that time, but from what she told me he just needed some help, a place to stay for a while. She tried to get him some work. [She] basically took him in, but he was older so it wasn't necessarily a situation where she could adopt him. But basically that's what it was.

Jamie: But did Snow live with Lisa at the time of Lisa's accident?

Stephanie: Snow lived with her for a while, but was living with her mother at the time when Lisa was in Honduras.

Jamie: You were around when Lisa was supposed to be missing and she and

Shawn were in the Honduras and in London?

Stephanie: Yes.

Jamie: Shawn told me that that wasn't Lisa's idea of "Let's go away and pretend like I've been kidnapped."

Stephanie: You know, to be honest, I don't know whose idea it was, but it was my first time that I was ever supposed to go out of town on the job. All I was told was to make sure she gets on the plane, make sure she gets there on time.

Jamie: To go where? To Las Vegas?

Stephanie: To Las Vegas for the press conference. That morning we were loading up the car and she told me that there was a change in plans; that she wasn't leaving that morning to go to Vegas. And she couldn't really get into it with me at that time about what was going on. Then she and Shawn left. She did not tell me what was going on. I had only been working with her for a couple of months by then and she did not share with me what was going on until after the fact. She basically told me that she was going to take that opportunity to turn it into a good thing for the whole event. Like she tried to turn it into a contest to get the fans involved

Jamie: What kind of contest?

Stephanie: Fans had an opportunity to spot her and Shawn and they could take pictures and turn them in to the label and she was going to fund a prize for whoever spotted them. Then she would send them to the MOBO Awards in London.

Jamie: And that didn't work out?

Stephanie: It just never happened

Jamie: Okay, so tell me what happened in the first accident with the little boy that happened in Honduras. Can you enlighten me on that?

Stephanie: We were driving - Lisa, myself, and one other person in the van - I was driving. We were going from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula. We had to go to the airport and pick up two people. I was driving on a two-lane highway. It was two lanes of traffic going in each direction. It was a highway with a median in the middle of it. I was driving in the left lane. So I'm like between the median and the right lane. There was a group of people, maybe 10 people, who were crossing the street. I could see them crossing the street. When I saw them they had crossed through my lane and they were crossing the second lane and getting onto the grass. They were almost to the end of the street. As I got to maybe five feet in front of where they had crossed, there was a little boy that was crossing the street with them, but somehow he did not get across the street with them. And as they were crossing the end of the street getting into the grass, the little boy just crossed the other two lanes of the highway and had gotten to the median. As I saw him he was stepping onto the road. His second foot never even hit the

ground, He stepped right in front of the car. There was nowhere to turn, you couldn't slow down not to hit him. It was just something that happened.

Jamie: Oh my god, that had to be devastating.

Stephanie: Very.

Jamie: What did his family say?

Stephanie: His family was actually with him at the time.

Jamie: Had they crossed or not crossed?

Stephanie: They were already in the grass on the other side.

Jamie: Had they left him? 

Stephanie: I don't know what happened. His family was actually very supportive. At the time they were more concerned about me than what was going on because they're a very spiritual family and they believe that was God's will. And there's nothing anybody could do. If ever I would cry, they told me that I would be upsetting the family and I would have to leave. I could not cry because they were very much resolved with what happened.

Jamie: Did you see the family again after that? Did you go to the funeral?

Stephanie: We were with the family the whole weekend, but we did not go to the funeral. There's a nine-day mourning thing that they go through. It was gonna be another almost week and a half before the funeral occurred. So we had gone back to La Ceiba, but at that time the attorney we were dealing with along with translators and people that lived there, they thought that it might not be a good idea to go to the funeral just out of respect for the family. Just to let them deal with the situation without having us there to remind them about what happened. We spoke to them beforehand and sent cards and stuff.

Jamie: Now some people were trying to say that you all didn't let the government know - that you all tried to pay the family off.

Stephanie: That is very not true. The way that the legal system is set up, there is a criminal justice side and there's the police side. This was a criminal justice side of it. That's why we had to deal through the judge and attorneys, but it's not required that you contact the police. The only reason that we would contact the police is like for insurance purposes to get a police report. And the family asked that we not involve the police at that time because it was already resolved and that would've been just dragging it on. It was something that wasn't necessary to do. So we respected the wishes of the family to not involve the police

Jamie: So you all stayed there in San Pedro Sula for the weekend at a hotel or something?

Stephanie: At a friend's house.

Jamie: And then Lisa gave the family some money, right?

Stephanie: Yes. When someone gets hit, first of all, 90 percent of the people drive away. That's what people kept telling us we should've done. Twenty people a day get hit there and that's something that they deal with. And if you do stay, your punishment or your sentence from the

court is to pay all of the medical bills or, if there's a death, pay all the funeral bills. And then you have to leave a standard amount of money with the family for any expenses that were incurred after the funeral involving the accident. And that is what Lisa did. She paid for the hospital, she paid for the casket, she paid to move the body, she paid for the funeral, she left the money with the family. The family did not want to take any money at all, whatsoever because they weren't expecting any help at all, They didn't even want to take the money, but that was something that Lisa insisted on. And they ended up taking money.

Jamie: Did they have money?

Stephanie: No.

Jamie: What kind of family was that? They didn't want to take the money?

Stephanie: Because people drive away. They weren't expecting us to take the boy to the hospital. They weren't expecting us to argue with the doctors to try to save the boy. They weren't expecting us to pay the hospital bills. They weren't expecting us to buy the casket. They weren't expecting any help with the expenses

Jamie: The boy was still alive?

Stephanie: Yes, he had a head injury and his brain was swelling and that was the urgency of the situation. But he was unconscious when we got to the hospital. We were moving him to a better hospital to have an intensive care unit, and during the process of him moving, he regained consciousness on his own and began to pull the tubes out of his nose and his mouth. By the time we got to the second hospital the doctor said he was sleeping… everybody get some

rest, he had regained consciousness. They were very optimistic; sent everybody home to get some rest, change clothes. We were all going to meet back there in the morning. When we got back in the morning they said he had slipped into a coma and they considered him to be brain dead.

Jamie: That happened in how many hours?

Stephanie: We left in the middle of the night on a Friday night. When we got back at like 9:00 Saturday morning, that's what they told us.

Jamie: Where was Lisa?

Stephanie: We were all there together. At that time they didn't want to do anything else for the boy. They considered him to be brain dead. After we met with the doctor and the family met with the doctor, they said they were going to run a series of tests that day to confirm if he was brain dead or not. That afternoon they told us that the results showed that he was brain dead and he was not going to regain consciousness. The family decided to immediately pull the plug at that point.

Jamie: How many people were in the family?

Stephanie: His mother was there, his stepfather was there, a couple of his uncles, cousins, his grandmother was there.

Jamie: Did people know who Lisa was down there in that part? Had they heard about her living down there? Did they know she was LeftEye?

Stephanie: No, they knew she was Lisa Lopes, but they didn't know the group. No, they didn't know who her personality was. That's actually why the story broke so much later in the newspaper - because the family saw her picture in the paper and recognized her and they wanted people to know that this is the woman who helped my son a few weeks ago. That's why the story broke. A lot of people think that the family was trying to get money, but it wasn't that at all. A lot of things were misconstrued.

Jamie: The story came after they saw the picture of Lisa's death?

Stephanie: Yes. They weren't trying to go to the press or the law or anything like that. This is after the pictures of her hit the papers in this other city.

Jamie: They have other pictures of her, too? How did those get out?

Stephanie: The pictures at the morgue? There's only one refrigerated morgue in the whole city. That's not the hospital that she was at. We had to move her to the hospital when she was pronounced dead. It's a state facility. You can go in there and say I wanna go in the morgue and look at this body and they'll let you in there.

Jamie: Anybody can go in there?

Stephanie: Yes. The gentleman who & at the embassy said he'd gotten was call about the accident and was supposed to go to the morgue to ID the body for embassy reasons. And by the time he got there the morgue door was open, her casket was moved, her casket was open and there were maybe 20 or 30 reporters in there taking pictures of her.

Jamie: Dang! Did you feel like the hospital she went to was okay? Because they told me they didn't even have painkillers.

Stephanie: It's not the same kind of hospitals that we have here at home. They won't treat anybody until they have money up front. That was first and foremost. So that may have been the situation, [that] they wouldn't provide painkillers-because they didn't have money at that time. But I don't know how much drugs they have stocked. They may have run out because it was a large accident. But I know they might have one surgeon in the whole hospital, so while one was operating on one person, the other people had to wait for hours because there was no one else.

Jamie: Now your boyfriend Kurtis had gone to the mall to see what time Egypt was gonna perform. They weren't gonna perform that day, right?

Stephanie: They weren't when we went to meet with them. It was actually me, Kurtis and Lisa's brother Ron. We had gone to talk to the people at the mall about when the girls were going to perform, but that was on a Thursday. We were only going to be there for the rest of the weekend. They had wanted the girls to perform for Mother's Day and when they found out we weren't going to be in Honduras they told us about a show that was taping on TV that day and was it possible that they could perform that day. And that's what we were trying to do.

Jamie: But Lisa had already planned for you all to go to Sambo Creek, right?

Stephanie: No, it didn't happen. We went back to the village to tell the girls that it was gonna happen that day and for everybody to get ready because we had to be back as soon as possible. It was at that time that Lisa said there was a change of plans. That the girls weren't going to perform that day, that they were going to do a photo session at Sambo Creek.

Jamie: Right, that's what I was just saying. But didn't you see her? Didn't you all go back to the mall?

Stephanie: That's why Kurtis and I were not in the car, because while they were getting ready to go to Sambo Creek before it got dark, we didn't have a phone number to contact the people at

the mall. Nor could we talk to them over the phone. So Kurtis and I went to the mall to talk to them and cancel their appearance. It was on the way back that we saw the accident.

Jamie: What did you think when you saw that?

Stephanie: Well, it had just started getting dark and we had gone to Sambo Creek where we were supposed to meet them. The people that we know there said that they hadn't seen any of our people there and they hadn't been there that day. So we just assumed that for whatever reason they changed their minds. When we got closer to the village we saw an accident on the side of the road, but we couldn't tell what vehicle it was because it was turned over. The only thing we could see was the undercarriage of the car. We stopped to help whoever was in the accident and no one spoke any English. So we're trying to communicate to the people, "Is

there anybody that needs to go to the hospital?" We were there for probably five minutes just trying to communicate with the people to see how we could help before I walked around the car to see if there was anybody in the car myself. That's when I saw that it was

our vehicle. We saw one of the guys that worked at the village there and he was telling us that Lisa had passed and we need to get to the hospital as soon as possible

Jamie: Everybody was at the hospital by that time?

Stephanie: Yes.

Jamie: So they took Lisa to the hospital first and then they took her to the morgue. Is that the way it was?

Stephanie: Correct.

Jamie: I'm so sorry to hear that. How did you all get along with the government? Did the government treat you all well?

Stephanie: We never had any involvement with the Honduran government. I mean, nothing happened that we would ever be involved with them. After this happened, the government didn't step in in any way. We automatically contacted the US Consulate and the Embassy so they would know what was going on. They were helpful but there was no involvement with the government.

Jamie: So who's going to take over LeftEye Productions now? Do you have to go back down to the Honduras and clean up down there and get her stuff out and all that?

Stephanie: No, we have some very close family friends that are there that are going to send the rest of her things here. As far as her business, that's all up to her mom.