ROCK DISTRICT, Clarendon — Linnette Blackstock, 58, has not had a good week, to say the least. One of her sons is dead and another has been charged with his murder.

Seventeen year-old Dwayne Falconer was fatally stabbed during an argument Monday night, allegedly by his 18 year-old brother Richard.

On Wednesday there was still a sense that something was amiss. Neighbours could be seen on their verandahs, speaking in hushed tones, obviously discussing the tragic incident.

The tears still flowed at the two-apartment house where Dwayne once lived with his mother and siblings. The family matriarch clutched her lower abdomen as she cried, triggering a bout of weeping among other family members.

“A mi right hand dat,” wailed Blackstock, referring to Dwayne. “It better de other one (Richard) did dead, a cruff dat, my God.”

According to her account of the incident that has ripped her family apart, Richard picked a fight with his younger brother, with whom he shared a bed.

“Both of them go pan di bed and a sleep, him (Richard) start to kick him and a call to him… and mi start to talk to dem as dem did a fight,” she recalled tearfully.

Another sibling’s attempt to quell the quarrel, as well as Blackstock’s appeal to Dwayne to leave the room to his cantankerous brother, failed to avert the tragedy. Dwayne was fatally stabbed in the chest as he made his way to his mother’s room.

“Mi sey sleep wid me, however, by the time he reached whe mi de, Richard give out, ‘(expletives) you know sey mi a go kill you.’ And den mi hear de youth sey, ‘mama mi dead’ and that’s it,” she said.

The 17 year-old fell to the floor and though he was quickly picked up by a relative who was in the house, he died on the way to the May Pen Hospital.

“If him did sick and dead, a would a feel it; but I wouldn’t mourn so,” cried his mother.

Dwayne was her last child.

According to Blackstock, Richard was the black sheep of the family who had dropped out of the Vere Technical High School and had a tendency to get into trouble.

“A nough money mi haffi pay fi him, ’cause him walk around and beat up people,” she said.

On the contrary Dwayne, she said, was a well behaved child who was kind to her, and did odd chores in the community to earn pocket money to get to classes at the Vere Technical High School which he began attending in 2001.

Administrators at the school remembered him as an average student who showed an interest in computers; one who did not talk much but cooperated in class.