MURDERED 12 year-old Janealle Blair was yesterday eulogised as a normal little girl who loved to suck her thumb, pluck her ear and constantly poked her navel, especially while watching her favourite children’s television show — Boy Meets World.

But Janealle was also remembered as a respectful, obedient and industrious person who lived in a society inhabited by sick and evil men.

“It could’ve been my daughter,” said the officiating pastor, Orlando L Patterson. “We are a part of this society where men are sick… controlled by the evil one. We have no love in us as a society today, that is why the criminals are running wild, taking life that they cannot give.”

Patterson’s sermon was absorbed by hundreds of mourners who filled the Old Harbour Seventh-day Adventist Church to overflowing to pay their last respects to the young girl whose gruesome murder shocked and moved Jamaicans.

Just one week after celebrating her birthday, Janealle Blair left her Old Harbour Glades home for summer school at Old Harbour High. She did not return home. She was last seen boarding a white Toyota Corolla taxi in Old Harbour square. That was July 14.

Six days later, her badly decomposed body was found in bushes near the Salt River main road in Clarendon. The body had multiple stab wounds and a laceration to the heart.

Two days later, on July 22, police in May Pen detained a man for questioning in connection with the murder. They have not yet said whether he has been charged or released.

But while the police continue their investigation into the case, the young girl’s relatives and friends are still searching for a reason for her cruel death.

For Victoria Levy, the senior vice-principal of Marlie Mount Primary and Infant School which Janealle attended, the answer was simple but disturbing — Jamaica has gone mad.

Levy’s advice to mourners was to “bring back community living and do not leave children to a society that has gone… stark, staring mad”.

According to Levy, Janealle’s short stay at the school had “invoked memories that will stay in our hearts”.

The Ministry of Education’s officer for Region Six, Mary Nicholls, made an almost similar plea to Levy’s. “This is a call for unity in the community. We need to have that eye to protect our child,” she said, adding “we will never get the full wisdom of why it happened”.

Kayan Williams, a classmate of Janealle’s, told the Observer while she walked from the church with her mom, that she remembered her friend as “nice, always playing with her friends and cheerful… And kind,” she added, before disappearing into the scores of mourners outside the church.

There, people gathered in small groups, mostly discussing the tragedy or whether to make the trip to the graveside in Warmiston District, St Elizabeth.

But as they talked, they looked on impressed at the glass carriage carrying Janealle’s white and pink casket, both provided free of cost by Panton Witter, the owner and operator of Witter & Sons Funeral Home.

Witter, the Observer learnt, absorbed most of the costs for Janealle’s funeral.