The shooting death of a 16-year-old Muschett High School student and her uncle in Cheesefield, St Catherine, early Sunday morning has left her family and school community severely devastated.

The deceased have been identified as 35-year-old Lerude Bartley of Fourth Street, Linstead, St Catherine, and his niece, Octavia Leslie of Deeside, Trelawny.Bartley is said to have been released from prison last year after serving a 15-year sentence for murder.According to family members, Octavia, who was fondly called Tavia, her four siblings and their parents, went to Linstead early Saturday morning to attend her aunt’s funeral which was scheduled for the following day.After attending the wake throughout Saturday night, during the wee hours of Sunday morning, Octavia accompanied her uncle, who she was meeting for the second time, to the bordering Cheesefield community where he walked home an elderly woman.But tragedy struck while they were using a short cut on their way back. They were both shot in the head by unknown assailants.According to one family member, when the explosions were heard, someone at the wake expressed that it was Bartley who was shot, but they did not have the slightest idea that Octavia, who was listed on the funeral programme to sing, was also shot.“Somebody said Larro get shot and we rushed out and went to look if it was true that my uncle dead. Then mi go over him and see the whole of his head back covered in blood. I passed a person in blue, but did not know it was my sister at the time,” Octavia’s distraught brother told the

Jamaica Observer West at their family home earlier this week.“Mi couldn’t even cry at the time. Mi just numb up.”“Mi shake up, mi shake up, mi really feel it,” muttered Octavia’s father, Glenroy, whose face was contorted with grief.Meanwhile, there was a similar gloomy atmosphere at Muschett High as existed at the home of the Leslies.When the

Observer West visited the school, Principal Leighton Johnson’s face was a picture of grief.“At this point the school is extremely hurt; we are hurting. There is a mixture of hurt and anger,” Johnson said.“It is something which is hard to swallow. It is something hard to take.”He described Octavia as a good student who “was a decent young lady; a young lady who was soft-spoken and knew what she was about”.In fact, the principal recounted that because Octavia knew she would be busy attending the funeral over the weekend, she stayed behind at school late Friday evening to complete an assignment which was due on Monday.“She perhaps thought she would not have the time on the basis that she had a funeral to attend. And to hear that a part of the process of being at that funeral, coming from the wake, she was gunned down with another family member,” Johnson rued, adding that both teachers and students openly wept when news of the tragedy broke.It was déjà vu for the school community who are still reeling from the death of another grade 10 student, Shanique Rose, who was shot dead while travelling on a bus along the Lima main road in St James on Friday, April 7.“There are students who are asking when is this going to stop. There are students who are saying, ‘Sir, we have to do something about it,’” Johnson expressed.A team from the Trelawny Victim Support, led by Reverend Owen Watson, visited both the school and the student’s home where they offered grief counselling.