The night a boy, aged 5, was allegedly killed, buried by his dad
In a bizarre close to the night, a man was talking on the phone some time before 11:00 pm, when he heard what he described as “weird noise” coming from next door in a Manchester community on Wednesday, July 20, 2022.
He remained uneasy for the rest of the night.
The following morning, acting on a gut feeling, the concerned neighbour went to the house and inquired about his neighbour’s five-year-old son. When the father’s responses didn’t make sense to him, he prevented him from leaving the house and then called the police.
Mandeville police went to the scene and the father told them that the boy’s mother had picked him up earlier and left with him. The police then brought him to the station to make an official statement, and during that time, the distraught neighbour could not sit still. He went back to the house.
What he discovered then, confirmed his suspicion that something horrible had happened.
“I walked round the whole place and look everywhere. I searched the entire house and when I go around to the back, I saw a sheet with some blood. Same time I called back the police because mi seh mi nah touch the sheet. I tell them what I see and they came back with a SWAT team. At that time, I was certain that the little boy dead, but I didn’t see any body,” he told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.
Sources told the Sunday Observer that after the discovery, police then led the father to believe that his son’s mother had showed up at the house asking for the boy the morning — proving his version of events to be false.
According to the Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), the man confessed to killing his son, and informed the police where he had buried the body later that day. When police went to the location the youngster’s body was found buried beneath stones. It is believed that the boy was beaten to death.
The neighbour, who said he treated the boy like his own son, almost passed out upon getting the gruesome confirmation.
“Mi belly bottom cut mi. The little boy was like my son. As a man, mi feel it in my belly bottom. Every morning when him [father] gone leave the boy, him come call my 19-year-old son. Sometimes when my son doesn’t answer him, a me pull the door and let him in and make breakfast for him and thing. You will hear him outside calling out. I couldn’t leave him. I even bring him to work with me and people say he is my son the way how him stick on to me,” he told the Sunday Observer.
But the story took a wild turn when the boy’s mother, who lives in St Catherine, told the Sunday Observer that she was under the impression that her son was overseas with his grandmother.
“One day him aunty call mi and said the grandmother said I should bring him because she is going to sort out his papers to carry him overseas. I said, ‘as long as you’re going to take care of my son, fine.’ The next morning, I packed his bag and take him to the aunty. That was 2020. The next day, I got a phone call saying his uncle picked him up and took him to the grandmother in Clarendon,” she recalled.
“From that, I thought he was overseas. Anytime I called, I hear that him granny have him and him overseas.”
The woman, who mothers two other children, said a cousin contacted her on Facebook in July 2022, and informed her about the incident. She was stunned.
“I prayed the whole night. I didn’t sleep that night when I hear. I cried the whole night. I went one week without eating; I broke down bad, bad. My mother had to be telling me to remember that I have my daughter and next son to live for. I find myself drinking off one bottle of raw rum. How I do that? I have no idea,” she said.
And there was no appease for over a month. She said it was a painful, waiting game of uncertainty and at the same time, mourning, as she waited for an autopsy to be done so she could see her son’s body.
“He died July 21 and I saw him about August 26. It affected me bad, because the whole time mi a fret and a wonder if a him. It was puzzling.”
When she finally identified the body, “I break down bad. All now mi cyaa come to reality. Every time me go a mi bed and close my eyes, a him mi a see a night-time.”
Another relative explained to the Sunday Observer that the wait to see the boy’s body was brutal.
“It was almost a month and we didn’t get any call. So, I decided that we would go up to the Mandeville station and when we went up there, that’s when the police tell us that the autopsy was going to be done the day after. We didn’t know. And if we didn’t go to the station, we would just be sitting and not know,” she recalled.
“He was a very quiet child. He didn’t talk much. The only thing him do a love eat. He would eat and go to sleep; he could stay with anybody. He don’t give trouble.”
She added that each day, his murder is a fresh wound for the family.
“It’s very hard. It feels like it just happened yesterday. We are not coping well at all. It is really shocking and it is really rough. We don’t hear anything at all from the police.”
In addition, while the unknowing mother believed her son was overseas, the neighbour, who had developed a fatherly love for the boy, tried locating her on social media. He told the Sunday Observer that he wanted to get in touch with the boy’s family because he didn’t believe he was in good care when staying with the father.
“I went on Facebook and start looking for the little boy mother, or any family member. But him never know him mother last name, so I was just searching for the first name. The only person name him know in full is his name and him father name. Every picture I look on and show him, him seh ‘no, a nuh she dat.’ I really wanted somebody to come for the boy,” he lamented.
“I don’t know when mi a go overcome this one yah. Mi love the little boy like a my pickney. Mi belly bottom cut mi deep. Mi try mi best fi save the little boy. Mi try everything. I went on every site looking for his mother. From my son a eat, him affi eat,” he continued.