ST ANN’S BAY, St Ann — On Sunday — Mother’s Day — while a number of people were busy pampering their mothers, helping them around the home or just doing something special for their moms, three children — aged 13, 14 and 17 — were left to mourn.

The decomposing body of their mother — Adina ‘Annie’ Bell, a 36-year-old bartender — was found in bushes near the Marcus Garvey Information Centre, across from the community health centre in St Ann’s Bay, about 8:00 am.

According to residents, a man who had gone to pick castor beans, stumbled upon the body in bushes and raised an alarm.

Bell, who lived at Salem, Runaway Bay, was reported missing last Thursday, two days after family and friends did not hear from her and calls to her cellphone went unanswered. Bell was reportedly last seen last week Monday night when she left for work here in St Ann’s Bay, not far from where her body was found.

The children, the Jamaica Observer was told, did not get their usual early morning call from their mother which alerted them that something was wrong, so they brought it to the attention of their aunt who tried to make contact with Bell, but there was no success.

It later emerged that their loved one was murdered. Residents who had converged on the scene where Bell’s body was found said it had several chop wounds. However, the police said an on-the-spot post-mortem conducted was inconclusive.

“She loved her kids. She would get up every morning — like quarter to five — and she would call her kids and wake them up for school,” said Dean Johnson, a friend of Bell.

Johnson, who returned from the United States on Saturday, said when she was leaving the island last month Bell accompanied her to the airport.

“She was very kind, very loving; she was not someone to pick trouble with anybody,” she added with teary eyes.

Added her elder sister Cynthia Bell: “Anything wrong with Annie (as she was affectionately called) she tell me as a big sister. When she a go come down here in St Ann come work me tell her say Annie don’t come down here,” said Bell, who travelled from Kellits in Clarendon to the crime scene on Sunday.

Cynthia said she looked after Bell’s two younger children, 13 and 14 years old, while their mother worked in St Ann. Bell’s 17-year-old reportedly lived in Kingston.

Cynthia said although she tried to persuade her sister not to go to St Ann to work she said her sister was determined to make life better for her children.

She said her sister had visited her children a week earlier and had left only the Wednesday before she was reported missing.

Meanwhile, Cynthia said her sister never told her of a dispute with anyone, however, she said that since she was reported missing it emerged that she and another woman had a dispute regarding her relationship with a man. It was not clear, however, if that report was part of the police’s investigation into the bartender’s death.