The grief was evident, and the tears flowed freely as residents of Tredegar Park, St Catherine, Jamaica, responded to the killing of eight of their neighbours yesterday morning.
But what was more evident was the anger, as the residents claimed that they had been abandoned by the security forces and their political representatives and left to the mercy of heartless criminals.
With five men and three females, including an 11-year-old girl dead, the residents of the east central St Catherine community had reason to mourn.
“A yesterday me pick some ackees and give me mother to cook,” recounted the son of 43-year-old Erong Hopelyn Dennis, one of the three women killed in the wee hours of ‘Black Friday’, August 13.
In addition to his mother, the young man, whose name is being withheld, lost his 11-year-old sister, Angel Anderson, his sister Monique Nekfifia Anderson, 23, and his brother Joel Anderson, 16.
Another of his brothers was left hospitalised with gunshot wounds after the gunmen sprayed bullets into their house.
“My mother nuh come out of the yard, and if you see her on the road, is she and nuff little children because she nuh talk to people,” said the young man who is left to care for his two younger brothers – three and six years old – who were the only persons in the house not shot by the criminals, in the section of Tredegar Park known as Monkey Town.
