IN the deadly Mountain View Avenue area of eastern Kingston where 17 people have been slain since last month, residents are no longer embarrassed to admit they urinate on themselves each time the guns bark their deadly message of death and mayhem.

At night, an eerie silence descends on the area and not even dogs would venture out, say long-standing residents, many of whom would leave now, if they had somewhere to go. Some more fortunate ones have high-tailed it out of the area with barely the shirts on their backs.

Daylight brings no respite from the fear which hangs so thick in the air, “you could cut it with a knife”, said a young man, nervously looking over his shoulders.

Residents speak to reporters in hushed or guarded tones and ask not to be named. It is obvious they are badly shaken by the most recent upsurge in violence which has forced a decision from the national security ministry to establish a police station and a security command post in the area to keep warring factons at bay.

A tight curfew and the presence of heavily armed police and soldiers have caused a lull in the violence. But the fear lingers.

Such is the level of desperation that a group of women openly advocate the return of controversial tough cop, Reneto Adams, who faced off with eastern Kingston gunmen when he was in charge of that police district. According to them, only Adams can restore calm to the area.

“The gunmen are afraid of him because he knows most of them and he is not afraid to go for them,” a spokeswoman for the group declares.

But Adams’ return is unlikely, after the scrapping of his Crime Management Unit following the Crawle shooting incident that claimed four lives and triggered an internationally-supported investigation into allegations that the four were murdered and not killed in a shoot-out as police claimed.

Mountain View Avenue has frequently made the news for its sporadic outbreaks of violence. A 48-year-old domestic helper says she still shakes every time she recalls an incident when she thought her 20 year-old son had been shot dead. “Run Dave Run!” she had screamed as gunshots rang out in one of the lanes in the volatile Mountain View Avenue area. In terror she had seen him clutch his back and fall heavily to the ground. She herself froze and could not move.

“I started to peepee (urinate) up myself and my belly bottom felt weak. I could not move. But one of my neighbours grabbed me and pulled me to safety,” she told the Sunday Observer. When calm returned to the area, it turned out that her son had only tripped and had not been shot as she had thought.

But the incident is an indication of the heightened unease that grips this violence-stricken community along the capital city’s most travelled route to the Norman Manley International Airport.

Dave and his mother had actually gone to look at the body of another young man, Delroy Carter, who had been killed by gunmen on June 20. Police reported that Carter was gunned down inside his house at around seven in the morning.

About an hour after Carter’s murder, Mark Ellis, a supervisor of Ring Road Biscuit Company, was shot on a passenger bus that was travelling along Mountain View Avenue and was pronounced dead at hospital.

In the last month, gun violence has claimed the lives of 11 people and dozens more have been injured. Since last week Saturday, about six persons have been killed in the area.

Saying they can’t take any more of the violence, many residents have fled the area. When the Sunday Observer visited the area on Friday, few persons were out in the streets and the atmosphere was tense.

“This last war (the last two months) hit me more than all the others because it is not restricted to the man dem in politics,”said a woman who said she was born and raised in Mountain View. “Children and the elderly also getting killed. In the nights, nobody wants to sleep there, so you will see them with a little bag as they find somewhere to go.

“I am carrying my family — my six children and grandchildren — to the country. I don’t think I will stay there (country) because I have to work in Kingston. My family has invested over the years and built our home here so I don’t want to leave. Plus I don’t have the money to go pay rent now,” she confessed.

Several other residents expressed similar sentiments, giving family ties and lack of resources as the main reasons they did not want to leave their homes despite the violence in the area.

“A here so mi start mi life and a here so mi haffi end it,” said a determined 70 year-old business operator, Sylvester Baugh, otherwise known as “Butty”. He showed this reporter the front of his concrete shop which was riddled with bullet holes, a result, he said, of years of gunmen running through the area and shooting up his shop.

But despite some of the residents’ determination to stay in the area, their general cry is that they cannot cope with the violence.

“It is affecting the children badly because all under the bed and on the ground them have to hide. If my husband on the road mi have to call and tell him don’t come home because gunshot firing,” said a housewife. “If it was not my house I would have gone long time, but to go out and pay rent now after being made redundant — it is not easy.”

Similarly, 26 year-old Natalie, who is unemployed, said that she had lost seven pounds within the last two months and was worried about the effect of the violence on her nieces and nephew.

“It affects the children a lot because in the nights they can’t sleep and in the days they can’t go out to play. When them sleep them tremble and wet the bed,” she said. “All my neighbour son — he is two years old and every time him hear the gunshots him peepee up himself.”

One of her neighbours joined in the conversation: “I started sending my daughter to summer school but I have to stop. She is going into grade six but her teachers say that her performance is dropping. Dem did kill her aunty a couple years back and from that it affect her,” she said. “If I could get someone to buy my house, I would sell it and go outa road go pay rent.”

The negative effect of the violence has pushed many parents to remove their children from the Mountain View area to less violent places. But according to Dr Claudette Crawford-Brown, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies (UWI), some of the children would need professional help to recover from the trauma.

“Many of the parents don’t even recognise that their children need help… they need to get their children assessed and have some form of intervention to help the kids cope with the violence,” said Crawford-Brown.

She suggested the children should be taken to facilities such as Mico Counselling Centre, the UWI Child Health Clinic and the network of child guidance clinics across the island.

Crawford-Brown, a 30-year veteran of child care issues, has had to treat severe cases of children being exposed to violence, such as seeing their relatives and parents shot and killed, as well as children used as human shields by gunmen, at the UWI Child Health Clinic where she works.

“Their constant exposure to violence leads to trauma and desensitisation… it will also affect their emotional, cognitive and social development,” she told the Sunday Observer. “We are creating a generation of traumatised children… and in recent times it seems there is a level of apathy when it comes to violence against children.”

But in Mountain View Avenue, it is not just the children who are traumatised. According to 19 year-old Marsha, she cannot erase the memory of four people, including a pregnant teenager, being killed near her lane last year.

“It was just before the general elections and that night about 50 men and women came across the gully in masks. They had a list and dem read off who to kill. Even a dog up the lane them shoot. Up to now mi can’t forget that,” she says.

For one housewife on Mountain View Avenue, her most truamatic experience happened late last year when bombs were thrown into her apartment complex.

‘You are seasoned to the gunshots because you hear them every day,” she said. “But when the bombs drop it is terrible — too much. At the time, even the fire brigades had to turn back. They could not come into the area. It stress you and you shake up — even though you go to church but it still affect your nerves.”

Sometimes the violence is politically motivated, she explained. During flare-ups, gun shots are traded between supporters of the two major political parties — the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Areas such as Backbush, Jacques Road and 63 Mountain View Avenue are staunch JLP supporters, while PNP strongholds are in Saunders Avenue, Rockfort, Burger and McGregor Gully.

While some other members of the community speculate that the cause of the violence this time may not be political, they all agree that the situation was frightening.

“Sometimes it makes me feel low. It is a constant living in fear,” said one resident. “Most mornings when you get up, you listen out to hear if any shots are being fired. When you get to the bus stop you keep looking from left to right and all around. When you leave work you have to call and ask your family if anything is happening in the area and if it is safe for you to come in — whether you must walk at the top or bottom lane — which one is safer.”

Added the woman: “If there is curfew, sometimes they don’t want to let you out of the area. The children can’t go to school and you can’t go to work. If I did not have an understanding boss I would be fired long time.”