JEFF Joseph Smellie, the 16-year-old Calabar High School student who was fatally shot by police on August 19 at Penwood Road in Waterhouse, will be buried on Sunday.

But as the date of the service draws near, shocked family members are still struggling to come to terms with his death. In fact, on Tuesday Smellie’s mother, Christine Coombs, told the Observer that she blamed herself for his death.

Smellie was shot dead during an alleged shoot-out with the police. At the time, the Constabulary Communications Network (CCN) said Smellie was among a party of men who fired on a police patrol after they were ordered to park the white Toyota Corolla in which they were travelling.

“The driver pulled up, the men alighted and reportedly engaged the police in a shoot-out,” the CCN release said.

The CCN said that Smellie, who was injured, ran into a gully and that residents who gathered at the scene prevented the police from taking him to hospital. He was eventually taken to the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) when reinforcements arrived on the scene, but died while undergoing treatment.

But Coombs on Tuesday denied police claims that her son was killed during a shoot-out. He was a good son and a hard worker, she said.

He worked part-time at the Lerner shop in the Washington Boulevard Super Centre on Fridays and Saturdays during the school term, and the company employed him full-time during the summer holidays.

Smellie should have started fifth form at the beginning of September, when school re-opened. However, ironically, his funeral service will be held in the Calabar school chapel this Sunday.

“I feel a way that I woke him up and that he was killed by the police; but if it wasn’t him that they killed it would probably be one of my brothers,” Coombs said, close to tears.

Coombs was making reference to the fact that on the day of the shooting, she had instructed Smellie’s father, Stanford, to wake their son and ask him to accompany his grandmother to the hospital.

Smellie’s grandmother, Jean Davis, had apparently suffered a second stroke shortly before midnight on August 19.

“My son was asleep and I asked his father to wake him up. His father wake him and tell him that he would have to assist to take his grandmother to hospital (Kingston Public Hospital),” Coombs explained.

A neighbour with a taxi from premises in neighbouring Waterhouse took the ailing Davis, Smellie, his uncle Trace, and mother to the KPH.

Coombs said the taxi operator was initially reluctant to take them to the hospital because Waterhouse was plagued by violence.

“At the time there was a flare-up of violence, and there were heavy police patrols in the area,” Coombs recalled.

The taxi operator eventually agreed to take them to the hospital in his Toyota Corolla taxi.

Coombs stayed with her mother at the hospital and the others returned to Waterhouse.

Coombs said that the taxi driver left Trace and Smellie in Waterhouse near a gully bank that residents from both Waterhouse and 113 Washington Boulevard – where Smellie lives with his mother – use to access their homes.

Residents from the two communities use ladders on opposite sides of the gully to enter and exit Waterhouse or 113 Washington Boulevard on the gully bank.

But the family said that as Trace climbed up the ladder on the Washington Boulevard side of the gully and was about to get off, the police allegedly fired the first shot.

“I got flat, and told Jeff (Smellie) who was already coming up the ladder to jump off and get flat. The taxi driver and I started shouting that we had just come from the hospital, but they (the police) continued to fire the shots. A shot hit Jeff and he fell off the ladder to the ground,” Trace said.

Coombs said that the post-mortem result shows that her son died from a gunshot that entered his right arm and then punctured his lung.

The Bureau of Special Investigation (BSI) is still probing the case.