For a newspaper, passing useful information on to our constituents — our readers — is of paramount importance.

However, it often becomes painful when that information reflects the kind of gruesome grief that is associated with murders, like, for instance, the latest one of promising young woman Ms Tasheika McKay in Clarendon, a pregnant mother of one, and the demise by suicide, the police have told us, of the man said to have increased Jamaica’s dismal homicide rate, last Sunday.

It might even be easy to say, here we go again. But for how much longer can we continue as a society with shameful incidents like this latest one, committed on Side A of the fence, as well as others inflicted mainly by gangsters on Side B?

We have in this space encouraged our citizens who have existing domestic differences to seek professional advice in order to reduce the possibility of the brutal end that many result in the way such examples of discord have come to. But many seek to do things their own way, which not only leaves scars on the families involved that can never be healed, but also continues to heap irreparable damage on Jamaica’s fabric — which has already been pointed out on record as having one of the highest murder rates in the western hemisphere, maybe even the highest per capita.

Now, here we are, once more weeping about the loss of a life that meant everything to some, and groaning that one, Mr Markland Hayles, said to be the man who cut Ms McKay’s journey short, has reduced the population by two.

One of the realities that those who have such challenges can learn is that when you kill someone so many others feel the pain, as stated by Ms McKay’s mother, Mrs Sylvia McKay. It is about time now, too, for those looking on, and who may at this point be harbouring thoughts of inflicting physical indignity on victims and suffering on their families, that such a route of crime does not usually pay.

In this instance, the confessed killer, according to the police, must have spent the last few hours of his life in sheer agony, which led him to end his journey this side of eternity.

Nowadays, too, the police have done a fine job of apprehending, arresting, and charging those who have given extra business to undertakers, with most leading to convictions. So what is the point of heading on that violent path when it is inevitable that offenders will be caught?

We would encourage the commissioning of a comprehensive psychological, if not psychiatric study to determine why people involved in romantic relationships, in the majority of cases men, so often resort to violence as a way of addressing their anger and frustration.

When that is done, the next phase must be to see how best the recommendations that would follow may be implemented in as timely a manner as the situation demands.

One of the suggestions from any such study would, of course, be if we are to be pre-emptive in a process of community education — a bid to try and convince a vast numbers of people that solving domestic issues does not mean rushing for implements of human destruction, like guns, knives, stick and stones, as a first choice.

While that is being contemplated, we must, again, make a special appeal to our citizens to try the route of reasoning when challenges arise and, for those whose discipline hangs in a vacuum of uncertainty, to simply walk away.

Too much blood has been shed already.