After Stunning Death of Gospel Singer Shawn Jones, Friend Sounds Alarm on ‘Mini-Stroke’
When gospel singer Lisa Reynolds of Headland, Alabama, got a call Saturday night that her friend, 32-year-old Alabama gospel singer and pastor Shawn Jones, had died, she was stunned.
“I was at home in the bed and I was asleep. When I woke up I realized that a lot of people had called from everywhere. My son woke me up probably about 10:15 that night. After that nobody slept,” she told The Christian Post in an interview Monday.
“It was just devastating. Nobody could believe it. Sometimes today, I still can’t believe it. One of his songs that keeps ringing in my heart, ringing in my head and I hear him sing it. ‘Lord I’m Depending on You.’ That song plays over and over in my head,” she said.
For several years, Reynolds, who is the lead singer of the gospel quartet The Female Chorus, said Jones and his band, Shawn Jones & The Believers, had performed at her group’s anniversary concerts. The late founding pastor of New Thing Empowerment Church was slated to be the headline act at her concert at Northview High School in Dothan, Alabama, on Sunday.
Jones’ fatal collapse while performing at The Event Center in Pensacola, Florida, on Saturday night (Nov. 18), however, interrupted everything.
Reynolds’ concert became an impromptu memorial. Some people showed up unaware that the would-be star of Reynolds’ Sunday night show died.
“Some of them did and some of them didn’t [know of his death],” Reynolds said.
“It was really shocking because he was such a young man. And you just never know what is gonna take place. There was a lot of hurt, mixed emotions and everything. We was really looking forward to it because that was like traditional. It (concert) was supposed to be from now until whenever we stopped singing,” she explained. “It’s just heartbreaking, to go there then and not see him, it just really put everything on pause.”
There has been no official word on Jones’ cause of death from his immediate family but extended family have publicly said the beloved minister suffered a fatal stroke. Jones himself revealed just over a year ago that he suffered a “light stroke.”
When asked about how Jones had been managing his medical issues since testifying about his stroke last summer, Reynolds said she knows he had been to the doctor since the episode but didn’t know much else. She noted, however, that just two months earlier she suffered a similar health scare known medically as a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or mini-stroke.
“I know he has been to the doctor since that happened. Like I said, nobody knows. About two months ago, I experienced the same thing, they call it a TIA (transient ischemic attack), a mini stroke,” she said.
According to the American Stroke Association, TIAs are labeled mini-strokes because they can be relatively benign in terms of immediate consequences. As with most strokes, TIAs are caused by a clot or blockage in the brain. The blockage in the case of TIAs only lasts for a short time — usually no more than five minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than a third of people who have a TIA and don’t get treatment have a major stroke within one year, the CDC says. And 10 to 15 percent of people who suffer a TIA also experience a major stroke within three months.
Jones suffered a mini-stroke last August while ministering at a revival service. He indicated that instead of seeking help immediately he relied on his faith in God and didn’t get a medical diagnosis until several days later.
“I got home and I told honey and my mother about it. [They said] you need to go to the emergency room. I said give me till Sunday morning, let me go to church,” he recalled.
Source : Christianpost
