ST ELIZABETH — “Dem kill me baby,” Melleta Cunningham said during an interview with the Jamaica Observer on the weekend, four days after rampaging gunmen terrorised the mountainous Pisgah/Huntley Castle district of north-west St Elizabeth, robbing them of the life of 16-year-old Shemar Blackwood.

Cunningham’s comment was uttered in a calm, even tone that did nothing to blunt the pain engulfing her since the night of Tuesday, November 11 when Shemar, the last of her four children and a student at Maggotty High School, was cut down in an unexpected and most violent manner.

“He’s my baby. I have no more baby and that tear me up. Tear me up. That really tear me up inside,” she said on Saturday, her eyes appearing void of life.

“It’s terrible, man,” she said and sighed deeply. She then repeated the words “terrible man” at least twice and trailed off into a whisper.

“Better if my son did even cripple and I know I have the challenge to take care of him. It would be hard, but at least he would still be my baby,” said Cunningham, who said she hasn’t eaten since last Tuesday night.

During the interview at the shop where the incident occurred, Cunningham’s friends stopped by on the way from church.

“How you coping?” one wanted to know.

“Coping?” she asked. “Every day I cry. I cry and cry and cry because mi still cyaan believe.”

“A wah really happen?” another asked and Cunningham again started relating the story.

“If you don’t want to talk bout it, don’t talk. And let me tell you this, if you feel fi cry don’t hold back the tears. Don’t try fi hold it back. You see tears, it good fi you,” another of the women said at one point.

The women went on like this for a while in an attempt to comfort Cunningham.

“Mi feel it. Mi cyaan stop cry over it. The way how mi halla, it come een like a outa mi own womb him come from,” said the same woman.

November 11 is a day the family and the community at large will never forget, as violent men again scarred more lives with their ugly legacy. Melleta and Joseph Blackwood (Shemar’s father) will never forget the sound of gunshots as they ripped through flesh and ricocheted off the tiles where Shemar and nine other men lay. They will go to their graves with the awful memory of brain matter leaking from their “baby’s” head.

The events of that fateful night were the last thing the family had in mind when they moved from Kingston some seven years ago. Blackwood had left the community for Kingston after leaving school in the 1960s and returned because he wanted a quieter life.

“I came back here to visit and saw how quiet and peaceful it was and wanted to return home,” he said. He then added: “And this come happen. You would think that that would happen in town. Not here. Right at we doorstep.”

But ominous signs had started appearing on the horizon in recent times. A month before the incident, a bar was robbed in the area, then about a week later, a man known as Ninny was shot dead close by. The incidents are believed to have been carried out by the same group of men.

Last Tuesday was like any other at the family-operated shop at their yard. Relatives and community members were gathered in the shop playing dominoes and drinking when three men with guns arrived on foot around 9:00 pm. (Another group of three gunmen had moments earlier robbed a cook shop and patrons in Pisgah.)

Blackwood thought the men at his shop door were soldiers until they ordered patrons to lie on the floor and started rifling through their pockets, stealing cellphones and money. They also stole a quantity of money from the shop, as well as liquor.

One of the patrons ran from the shop in the darkness.

After gathering their loot to leave, one of the gunmen outside said to his crony, “You naa lef nothing?” He then turned and fired inside the shop, before the three escaped on foot.

The place fell silent and the patrons lay frozen with fear. Cunningham got up off the floor around the counter of the shop and asked Blackwood if the gunmen were gone. Before he could answer, the patron who had run away earlier came back and started running around, shouting that Brenton (a name by which Shemar is called) was dead.

Cunningham ran around and grabbed Shemar’s feet and started shaking them. “Brenton?! Brenton?! Brenton?!”

No answer.

“Brenton?!” she yelled a final time before screaming, “Better a did me dem kill! Kill me! Kill him father but not my son!” Blackwood ran to where Cunningham was cradling her son.

“Mama,” Blackwood said to Cunningham, “see him marrow on the ground. Dem kill him. Di man dem kill Brenton!”

He ran outside and started crying for help. Cunningham started crying for help too. She started seaching through her phone, frantically dialing the numbers for people who could drive her son to the hospital.

One of the men who was shot came stumbling around the corner of the shop. “Unno go round deh go look pan Luke,” he said. “Luke get shot too.”

Joseph ran to the back where he saw his cousin Luke lying in a trench wounded and started bawling out more.

A van would later come to take the wounded to Black River Hospital.

During the Observer’s visit to the shop one slipper left beneath a bench lay where the owner had kicked it off. Cunningham pointed out several bullet holes in the tile. Daylight streamed into the shop from a hole left by a bullet.

After the killing, police said they were following strong leads that could result in arrests.

Ever since the incident, people try not to stay out after dark.

Adjectives such as “kind, quite, nice, good-behaving” were used to describe Shemar, who wanted to join the army or become an architect on leaving school.

“Nobody can say he disrespected them,” said his mother.

When told that he seemed to be holding up well, Blackwood said: “I try. I try. I try. Sometimes I call my sister and Brenton’s brothers and sisters and the mourning — it gets to me. It’s very hard for two of us to break down, so I’m trying. If the two of us break down there is nobody here for us.

On Tuesday, Sean Graham, vice-principal of Maggotty High, said of the killing: “It is very shocking; it has been a lot of tears and sadness [here], especially among students within his grade and a lot of teachers are mourning; they are also in total shock. It is a mixture of shock and disbelief mixed with sadness.”

Shemar, he said, was a fair performer academically, well-behaved, actively participated in a number of house activities and was respectful.