JOHN’S HALL, St James

This community is still mourning last Sunday’s arrest of 35-year-old Maxine Brown, the vice-principal of the John’s Hall All Age School, for the stabbing death of her husband, Junior.

Hardest hit though is the couple’s 14-year-old son, Leon.

“The part that grieve me, he is crying out in his sleep. I will have to take him to the doctor. I have to seek counselling for Leon,” said his maternal grandmother Juliet Stewart who has had custody of Leon and his four-year-old brother Mikail since Sunday’s tragedy.

To compound matters, Mikail is afflicted with MLD (Metachromatic Leukodystrophy) a debilitating disease from which his sister died.

Now some residents are wishing that they had done more to intervene in the relationship which was characterised by abuse.

“All the while they fight. I come here and talk to them and I part them when they fight and so. She report it all the while but the police never come,” said Enel Thugwell, father of the accused woman. “One of the time the man told me if me hold him, he is going to chop me.”

The Browns’ marriage was seven years old, but they had been together for nineteen years.

According to Thugwell, who lives on premises adjoining the beleaguered couple’s home, the strained relationship had deteriorated to the point that his daughter had planned to move from the matrimonial home to another house she secured.

He told the Observer West that at minutes after II:00 pm Sunday he heard struggling inside the house.

After that, he said his daughter explained that she and her husband had an heated argument which escalated into a fight after which her husband “grabbed her up”.

Brown was stabbed during the tussle and subsequently pronounced dead upon arrival at the Cornwall Regional Hospital.

Stewart told the Observer West that she believed that Sunday’s incident was the product of years of abuse.

“It wasn’t her wish to do that and now it happen she gave up herself. She called them (police) and told them where she is. It is really unfair what happen to her. As a mother I can tell you it wasn’t her wish,” she said.

In the meantime, Brown’s peers at John’s Hall All Age School where she taught for nearly a decade, and the community at large are missing her.

The school’s acting Principal Maisie Beckford explained the situation.

“We are holding on, we are coping. The children have their different stories we just allow them to be free with their thoughts. You try not to accommodate too much of it because that can unleash a tide of uncontrollable emotions which can become problematic,” she said.

But although persons from the community came in to counsel the staff on Monday it hasn’t been easy, as Brown had been a very active member of the staff and the community.

Take Tuesday’s Jamaica Day celebrations at the school, from which Brown was conspicuosly absent.

“She was responsible for organising the event, she is the cultural agent,” said the school’s guidance counsellor, Carlene Duncan, noting that members of the school staff had to be employing much tact in explaining the situation to the curious students.