FOLLOWING the shocking, gruesome early morning double murder of husband and wife, Cecil and Phyllis Ramsay, allegedly by their 24-year-old son at their Christian Meadows home in Portmore, St Catherine, on Friday, residents are appealing to Jamaicans to not ignore clear signs of mental illness.

Sonia Morgan, president of the Christian Meadows Citizens’ Association, told the Jamaica Observer that the couple’s son — brilliant and promising — had always been sheltered and very restricted by his devout Christian parents.

Morgan and other residents shared that in recent months they had noticed a concerning shift in his behaviour and speech, but never dreamt it would one day lead to the brutal death of the Ramsay couple, both 55 years old.

Cecil Ramsay was a painter and lay preacher, while his wife Phyllis was the acting vice-principal at St Andrew Preparatory School. The son, at one point, worked at St Andrew Preparatory as a teacher’s assistant.

According to Morgan, the accused, who lived with his mother and father at their Antares Avenue house, had big dreams of becoming a football coach and was pursuing a degree at GC Foster College in St Catherine, where he was a well-rounded student who was running for president of a club at the institution.

Morgan, a very close neighbour of the family, said she noticed that the young man had stopped going to college and instead was spending most of his time with a pack of aggressive dogs and a parrot he owns. The Observer was told that in recent times he had been involved in loud arguments with his parents, and residents assumed he was rebelling. The observations, however, did not strike them as alarming, until yesterday when residents believe he “snapped”.

A bloody verandah was evidence of the horrifying incident. After allegedly killing both parents, he drove away a vehicle belonging to his mother, before crashing it in the Phoenix Park, Dunbeholden, area of Portmore. According to a police report, about 4:00 am cops responded to a call from residents there, who reportedly found the motor vehicle abandoned. Upon searching the car, blood was seen inside. Checks were made at the Ramsays’ home, and both of them were found with stab wounds. They were taken to hospital and pronounced dead.

Further, Morgan said last month she realised something was wrong when the accused had expressed that he was not feeling well. However, Morgan claimed that he said he was not going to get any medication because healing would come from God.

“It was like a red flag, but not to the point where people would go around saying that he was getting mad. I haven’t spoken to him much since last month. I have seen him in the backyard, but I started back work and we would just wave to each other. Work for me is absorbing,”she said.

Morgan added that the ordeal shocked the community but, beyond that, has reminded everyone of the importance of staying connected, of being each other’s keeper, and not ignoring signs of mental health struggles.

“Draw together and keep together as a community. Don’t be all up in people’s business, but be sufficiently close so that you can have a factual sense of the state of what is going on with anybody. If my husband and I are estranged, people should know that we are estranged.

“They might not need to know why, but they should know we are not getting along. People should not be too secretive. You have a right to your privacy and we don’t want to violate people’s privacy, but you don’t know what you will do from what you won’t do if you become imbalanced; it is good for people to know,” Morgan said, pointing out that she is deeply saddened even while harbouring a very strong sense of compassion for the alleged offender, who is a St George’s College old boy.

She shared that recently he began making strange utterances such as, “You don’t need to study anymore. God will just transfer the knowledge from your books.”

“We live behind each other so we would talk over the fence all the time. He used to come over to my house sometimes. His relationship with me was like a second mother/aunty talk type of thing because he is close to my children. He and my husband, my son, and cousin, they are all football fanatics.

“They would talk football a lot and sometimes watch football. His parents, they are decent, quiet people. They were very strict and they don’t allow too much mixing and mingling. When he was a baby, and my son was one year old, we were having the birthday party, and the little girls, his two bigger sisters, had to say ‘Aunty Sonia, could you ask Mommy to let us come, please, please’. I had to appeal to them to let them come next door for the birthday and they were allowed to come,” Morgan said.

She added: “Their son would talk and engage with us across the fence. Everybody who had interaction with him love him. He is like a second son to me. As a baby he would stay at the back door and he would look at me in my yard while hanging out the clothes and he would look at you, laugh, wave, and run away and come back. It is a sad story. I feel deep, deep sympathy because I understand mental illness and I think he just snapped. For some reason he was discouraged from getting too close to neighbours despite him displaying openness to others.”

Another female neighbour shared that she had heard a crashing sound after 3:00 am and went to investigate. She realised that a tree was knocked down and there were parts of a motor vehicle lying on a lawn in front of her house. It wasn’t until the police had come that she realised the graveness of the situation.

Meanwhile, when the Observer visited St Andrew Prep on Friday, grief counselling was being planned for students and staff. Students were sent home until next week Tuesday when classes should resume.

Several parents and staff members expressed shock at the incident, labelling it a painful loss.

“It is painful, especially considering the circumstances. I have been in tears all day as my entire family passed through her hands. She was one of the best,” one visibly shaken parent said.