LESLIE Malvo, the father of the 17 year-old boy arrested in connection with the Washington sniper killings, is a hurt and bewildered man.

Unaccustomed to the glare of media attention, Leslie Malvo, a 55-year-old mason, spent most of yesterday fielding questions from local and overseas journalists about his son, whose name, he insists, is Lee Boyd Malvo, not John Lee Malvo as is being reported in the United States.

“His stepfather must have changed his name,” said Malvo. “I don’t know the stepfather, I only see him on television.”

Although at times he appeared flustered by the continuous contact from the Press, he had, really, one major request — to speak to his son.

“I want to talk to my son. I want to know what’s going down — how he got involved in all of this. I need to ask what the real situation is,” Malvo pleaded in an interview with the Observer at his Oakland Road home in the tough Waltham Park area of Kingston.

“I have asked CNN to try and contact him for me,” said Malvo.

“I was shocked and cut up when I heard. I feel bad about it… from what I have heard so far, but I can’t say too much because I don’t know the full story,” he said.

Lee Boyd Malvo and his stepfather, 41 year-old John Allen Muhammad, were arrested on Thursday morning and held without bail as suspects in the sniper attacks in Washington D C, Maryland and Virginia, which began on October 2.

The two were held in a car at a rest stop 50 miles northwest of Washington D C, an area that has been gripped by fear for the past three weeks during which 10 persons were shot dead by a phantom-like gunman.

Among the victims was a Jamaican-born bus driver, Conrad Johnson, 35, who was shot early Tuesday morning as he stood on the step of his bus in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said that ballistic tests have linked a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle found in Muhammad’s car to 11 of 14 shootings, 10 of which were fatal.

Muhammad has since appeared in court and is due to reappear next Tuesday to answer a firearm-related offence committed in 2000. Lee Boyd Malvo is considered by the court to be a juvenile, therefore all of his proceedings are closed. Police said he was being held as a material witness, pending charges.

Yesterday, Alabama police said they had iron-clad evidence linking both suspects to a murder in Montgomery and would be seeking the death penalty.

According to Leslie Malvo, he first got the news about his son while at his job on Thursday.

“I was listening to the news on the radio when I heard the name and I said to my co-worker that that was my son,” he explained. “I have not slept since last night because I have been thinking about it and there have been constant calls from the overseas media to talk to me.”

In fact, Malvo’s interview with the Observer was constantly interrupted by the ringing of his cellular phone. Most of the calls, he said, were from overseas media wanting to interview him.

“I am not going to talk to them anymore until they can make a link for me to talk to my son,” he said, obviously upset, his reddened eyes showing his distress and pain.

“My son and I had a good relationship,” he continued. “Me and his mother break up in 1990. But me and him used to keep in touch. We used to talk good good; then about four years ago him stop call mi. I have not heard anything from him since then,” said Malvo, who is also known as ‘Brown Man’ in his community.

Malvo said he fathered two boys and two girls and boasted that he had always taken care of his children.

“Mi treat all a mi pickney dem good. Is four baby mothers I have and none of them can say that I don’t treat my children well,” he said, adding that Lee Boyd is the third of his children.

He explained that he and Lee Boyd’s mother, Una James, had lived together for four years at his sister’s house in the Waltham Park area before moving to another house further down the road.

“We spent a year here,” he said, pointing to his present home. “Then, because I used to travel back and forth between here and Grand Cayman for a few years; when I came back one of the time, she tek the boy and gone.”

“I got a phone number and kept in contact with my son but there has been no contact since the last four years,” Malvo explained.

He described James as “a good mother sometimes and a bad mother at other times”.

Although Malvo could not remember which primary and high schools his son attended while he lived in Jamaica, he described the boy as “a bright and intelligent boy who loved to read and play”.

Yesterday, Malvo’s neighbours said they shared his sorrow.

“It is sad. It hurts because he is a Jamaican and we really don’t need any more bad things happening to us now,” said one, who did not wish to be named. “I also feel it because the boy is from my community.”

Added a youth sitting on the wall near Malvo’s house: “Brown Man is an elder in the community and we respect him. He is a humble person and we are sorry that has happened to his son.”