The woman’s face was haggard.

She took a deep drag from a cigarette then began staring blankly into space.

“Imagine you live in a place for 40 years and then one night some little boys tell you say you better run away or else you and your family dead,” she said, tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

According to the woman, whose name cannot be published, she and her family had been targeted by gangsters because ‘We nuh mix up’. “We live in the ghetto but we always try to lift up our heads,” she told the Sunday Observer. “All my daughters go to good schools and my son don’t get the chance to mix up because I keep them indoors most of the time.”

The woman and her family were forced to flee their home after being labelled informers.

Since that time, she has been sleeping on the floors of the homes of kind friends. Her family has been separated as a result of a deadly gang war that has destabilised her community, a tough garrison in the Corporate Area.

“Mi pickney dem scatter all bout. Dem school life mash up and dem stress out bad,” the woman said with a defeated look. She added that she had received word that the gunmen were making plans to occupy her home.

According to top detectives in the constabulary, what happened to the woman and her family is an almost every day occurrence in some of the country’s tough slums.

“This happens all the time. People have to run away and start their lives from scratch,” Deputy Superintendent Oswald Eyre, who heads operations in the tough police division of St Andrew South, told the Sunday Observer.

Eyre has worked the tough streets and dark lanes of the police division and has first-hand knowledge of the strict code of ‘gangsterism’ which holds sway in the impoverished, crime-infested communities controlled by heartless young men intent on wreaking havoc.

Sometimes entire communities have been known to flee because of the threat posed by gangsters. This was the case in March 2004, when over 500 persons, one-third of them children, packed their belongings and left an area known as ‘Capture Land’ in Greater Portmore, St Catherine.

The residents were forced to run after gunmen killed three of their neighbours and threatened to take more lives.

The area remains deserted until today.

The actions of one family member sometimes results in harsh consequences for the other relatives.

“Mothers have been targeted because of the actions of their sons and other family members have been killed and maimed by those in search of vengeance,” Eyre said.

He pointed to the Henry family who lived in the hotbed community known as ‘Bowtie Land’, a ghetto community which occupies a piece of land at 82-84 Spanish Town Road.

The cop said a family member, known as Monk, was accused of starting a war in the community after he committed a series of crimes, including shootings and rape. In reprisal for his actions, his enemies shot and killed both his parents, four brothers and another relative.

Monk is now serving a sentence for illegal possession of a firearm and rape.

Most of the crimes are being committed by young males, who fill the ranks of the gangs that have inner-city communities in a stranglehold of terror.

One youngster who fled a rural hotbed told a chilling story.

“From mi a go primary school di man dem a gi mi gun fi hold. You have to hold it ’cause if you nuh go on like you up to it the man dem wi brand you as informer,” the young man, who said he is now a Christian, told the Sunday Observer.

He said that he and other young boys were given guns to hide and transfer from point to point throughout the community. Some of his friends, he said, had graduated into heartless killers.

“Me see my brethren shoot up a corner and kill one and injure ’bout three when him a just 15,” the youth said. “Right now, him a roll deep inna one gang.”

The teenage gangsters have no hang-ups about taking a life and according to the youngster, they even celebrate the death of their victims by drinking hard liquor and smoking marijuana.

The young man, whose face seemed to be recovering from a prolonged bout of ‘bleaching’, swore never to return to a life of crime.

“Me give thanks for my life because a nuff a my friend dem hold a spot inna the cemetery,” he said. “God has been good to me.”

Another 17 year-old, who contacted the Sunday Observer after reading an article headlined ‘Silence or death’, published two Sundays ago, recalled how she was taken advantage of by a gang leader.

“Him send come call me and when me go him make me know say a me and him a spend the weekend. I was just 15. He had his way with me from Friday night till Sunday and mi have to go on like him know him stuff,” related the girl, who was obviously still shaken by the incident. “Mi mother fret and nearly dead because nobody never know where me was for a weekend.”

The girl said her captor would call her over and have his way with her on a number of occasions. Finally, she got tired of being abused and ran away from the area.

“My mother can’t say nothing at all or else them deal with her case,” she said. “True dem ting deh me all drop out a school and start do little higglering because me never feel good ’bout myself.”

walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com