Millicent Forbes’ eyes were full of tears. Last week’s Appeal Court ruling denying leave for a Judicial Review of the acquittal of a cop who was charged with the murder of her 13-year-old daughter Janice Allen only served to increase her anguish.

It has been six years since Janice, known to her family and friends as ‘Chinny’, was shot dead while walking with her sister, Ann Marie, to a shop in their Trench Town neighbourhood, one of Kingston’s toughest communities.

“Ever since ‘Chinny’ dead, we no have no Christmas,” Forbes sobbed during an interview with the Sunday Observer last week. “My whole family is stressed. Even this morning Ann Marie break down in tears.”

Janice was the fifth of Forbes’ seven children and was a student at the Denham Town School at the time of her death in April 2000.

Unable to hold back the tears, Forbes recalled the fateful night of her child’s death as if it happened just yesterday.

“It was a Friday night, on the 14th of April. She and her sister just went up the road to buy something and ’bout five minutes after that me hear a barrage a shot,” Forbes said.

She said it crossed her mind that her daughters were on the road and even wondered if they were OK. But she never expected the worst.

“Then me hear somebody a run and a bawl say ‘Millicent, one a you daughter get shot’.

“But me say a she mussi jus hear the shot an’ lie dung. Den somebody else tell me say you daughter dead,” she recounted, the tears now flowing freely.

A police raiding party from the Denham Town Police Station, in an alleged exchange of fire with gunmen, had shot her daughter.

Forbes, however, insisted that the girls and the policemen were in full view of each other when Janice was shot.

“They even refused to help her, saying that she would blood up the vehicle,” Forbes said of the policemen.

Forbes alleged that the policemen also shot a youngster who witnessed the shooting and who had tried to assist Janice after she was shot. “He picked her up and was running with her for help an’ di police dem shoot him in him foot,” she told the Sunday Observer.

The youngster, whose name she gave as Calvin DaCosta, was arrested, Forbes said, and an attempt was made to charge him for the shooting of Janice.

“Calvin wouldn’t shoot Janice, dem grow up together, Calvin didn’t have a gun,” said Forbes.

DaCosta was actually arrested for the murder of Janice, but was eventually released without a charge.

Forbes said that she visited him while he was in hospital and was surprised by the attitude of a cop from the Denham Town Police Station to DaCosta.

“Hey bwoy, yu shoot the woman pickney. You tink yu a get way?” Forbes alleged that the cop said to the youngster.

“Him know sey is never Calvin shot Janice,” she said. “Mi couldn’t hold it back, an’ me tell him say him too lie and wicked, an’ mi a go show him who kill Chinny.”

Police Constable Rohan Allen (no relation to Janice) was arrested in May 2001 for Janice’s murder, and after preliminary examinations, committed to stand trial in the Home Circuit Court in November 2002.

The grieving mother told the Sunday Observer that during that time she received repeated visits from various policemen, and twice was offered substantial sums of money to drop the case.

Court records state that persons said to be acting on behalf of the accused approached Forbes wanting to help with the cost of Janice’s burial and offered her $150,000 to make the case “dead out’.

On another occasion, she was reportedly offered $120,000 to “finish away with the case”.

Forbes said that she even taped a conversation she had with a cop who had offered her money to drop the case. “I took it to the commissioner the next morning,” she said.

She said that initially the cop denied ever seeing her, but changed his statement after the tape was presented.

“I don’t know what became of that policeman,” she said.

Last week’s Appeal Court ruling, that upheld a ruling from a lower court, has left a bitter taste in Forbes’ mouth.

“For the past six years since Janice died, there is no one responsible,” she lamented, “and now he is back at Denham Town.”

Constable Allen was taken off front line duty after being charged, but was reinstated upon being acquitted in March 2004 after the prosecution stated that it could offer no evidence against him.

The decision displeased Forbes’ attorneys who pointed to 18 acts of misconduct by members of the police force designed to mislead the Court. Court documents state that the April 14 page of the station’s firearm register was torn out and at a later date the register was reported destroyed in a fire at the Denham Town station.

Additionally, the investigating officer was said to be ill and off the island for extensive treatment, but was seen two months later at the Coroners Court.

“How can the Court say that the police can do these things and nothing happens?” asked attorney Richard Small.

The application for a Judicial Review was made in October of the same year, but was denied by the Court and an appeal filed by Forbes’ attorneys Small and David Wong Ken.

The Court’s decision last Wednesday to again deny the Judicial Review was a heavy blow for the weary mother.

Seeming at a loss as to her next move, Forbes carefully chose her words.

“I don’t know where to start. I see nothing that is good,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, but I am not going to give up, even if it takes another 10 years, even to the last hour of my life, I am not going to give up.”

She displays a cynicism of the police and the justice system that is typical of many residents of Kingston’s inner cities.

“I was expecting it to throw out,” she said of the case. “Police never wrong yet. It is not surprising to me. It is a lot of things police do down there an’ get whey.”

“I am sick and I am hurt, and that pain will never leave me. I want Jamaica to know that if I had money I would get justice, but I don’t have money. There is no justice system for the poor in Jamaica.”

Even though she has received assistance from the human rights group Jamaicans For Justice, Forbes said that the ordeal has also taken a terrible financial toll on her.

“I am stone broke from Janice’s trial. I am just spending all over, an’ I don’t have it,” she moaned.

Attorneys Small and Wong Ken have said they will take their appeal to the United Kingdom-based Privy Council.

fosterp@jamaicaobserver.com