Amy Winehouse Hoped to Adopt Girl Before Her Death
Amy Winehouse had plans to adopt Dannika Augustine, a 10-year-old girl from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, in the months leading up to her death last week at the age of 27. “Amy was already my mother,” Augustine told the Daily Mirror. “I would call her Mum and she would call me her daughter. She took care of me, and he had fun together.”
Winehouse met Augustine during a trip to St. Lucia in 2009. After befriending the girl, the late singer attempted to rescue her from a life of poverty with the blessing of Augustine’s family, who had no issue with Winehouse’s history of alcoholism and drug addiction.
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“Amy loved everyone, but Dannika was a special one, her baby,” Augustine’s grandmother Marjorie Lambert told Rolling Stone. “She fell in love with Dannika. Dannika would be in the hotel bar, in her room, go to the swimming pool, go resting on the beach, running holding hands together, go riding horses together.” Despite Winehouse’s eagerness to adopt the girl, there were some difficulties in making it happen. “My granddaughter’s father wasn’t here in St. Lucia. So we can’t just give a child away just so you know? So we have to have the parents to get here and they have to decide. Maybe if she had stayed in St. Lucia longer, we don’t know what would have happened.”
Augustine’s parents Nadia Germaine and Vid Augustine were also on board with Winehouse’s adoption plans. “I thanked Amy for taking care of my daughter, and she said, ‘Dannika is taking care of me. I couldn’t live without her,'” Vid Augustine said. “I knew [Winehouse] could give my daughter a wonderful life.”
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