SORROW hangs like a black cloud over the quiet Brown’s Town community where a girl, 16, was brutally killed and a boy, 17, taken into police custody for murder.

Residents are desperate to understand why a girl so young should have had her life snuffed out and what could have motivated her accused ex-boyfriend.

“Jesus Christ, all now I can’t come to my senses,” said Audley Smith, a farmer, echoing the sentiments of several other residents.

The body of Nisa Grant, a student of York Castle High School, was found on February 5 with multiple stab wounds and her throat slashed, in an abandoned building in the town. The police later held Ajay Johnson, a student of Brown’s Town Community College and the girl’s ex-boyfriend, for the murder.

“To tell the truth, it just comes as a shock. We never see the signs. We never know he was capable of this. We still can’t come to terms with (the fact that) a student with nine CXC subjects (could do something like this); it shocking,” added Smith.

Police last week said they had received reports that Johnson had witnessed his father several years ago chopping his mother and later, believing her dead, committing suicide.

“As we carry out our investigations in the case we can confirm that this is one of the reports that we have received,” investigating officer Detective Sergeant Michael Thomas told the Sunday Observer.

“Yes, is true; we hear about the report also,” said one vendor from the teenagers’ hometown.

“I had always heard about that case but never track down that it was fi him family until mi hear about the murder of the girl,” added the woman, who identified herself only as May.

Police also said that, based on information they received, it appeared the young man had killed Grant after she broke off a relationship with him in December. In the wake of the break-up, police theorise that he lured the student monitor to the building where he carried out the attack.

Meanwhile, principal of Brown’s Town Community College, James Walsh said that leading up to the incident, all he knew of Johnson was that he was a very hard-working student who was always by himself.

“It is only after the incident that we got word of the ordeal with his parents. There were not any signs that he was capable of this; he was a straight A student,” said Walsh.

Students at the college said otherwise. They said he had become unusually withdrawn since late January.

“He had just stopped talking to people,” Sandra Smith told the Sunday Observer.

Other students said Johnson had last year written a letter which included reference to the incident involving his parents. Also, they said that the youngster had told Grant about it – which puzzled her at the time.

And as residents questioned what may have motivated the killing, a mother in Mount Edgecombe, a small housing scheme a few miles away from the main town, clutched a photograph of her daughter.

“I still can’t believe that this has happened; she was the best daughter a mother could ever have,” said Carol Moulton, mother of the slain Grant.

“She was my all, she was my life. I had so many hopes and dreams for my daughter. To see her life snuffed from her in that manner is too much to bear,” added Moulton, a teacher at Servite Primary for the past seven years, as she fought back the tears.

She added that it was last November that Grant had decided to give her life to God.

“Last November she had also got baptised and had also placed in her room a list of things to do and what she wanted to achieve for the New Year,” said Moulton.