Soft rain pouring from a darkened night sky rivalled the tears pouring down the cheeks of 51-year -old Veronica Nelson as news of the acquittal of the three cops involved in her daughter’s 2012 death was told to her by this reporter late Monday evening on a side street in Greenwich Town, Kingston.

“First I’m hearing this,” she said softly, closing her eyes in agony as the tears began flowing again for the then 16-year-old who was the first of her five daughters.

“For all the years Vanessa died, not one day nuh pass that I don’t think about her. Mi have a lot of friends who say ‘Joy, time pass, let go,’ but a tru’ them wouldn’t know it nuh easy fi let go…it hot, mi nah lie. I don’t know how I am going to sleep tonight. I don’t know how I am going to work tomorrow,” she confided.

Not a stranger to pain having since she lost her mother, father, and the father of her daughter who suffered a stroke upon hearing of his child’s death and died a mere two months later, Nelson groaned under the latest blow.

That blow came early Monday with the ruling of the Appeal Court acquitting constables Andrewain Smith, Durvin Hayles and Ana-Kaye Bailey, who were in 2013 convicted of manslaughter in relation to the shooting death of Vanessa and sentenced to 14 years and six months in prison each. The three had, however, been out on bail pending the appeal, which was filed in 2019.

According to the Appeal Court judges, the conviction of the three had failed, based on two elements of the trial judge’s sentencing directions to the jury relating to credibility and the manslaughter verdict which proved “fatal to the convictions”. They said, while the errors were due to the learned trial judge, there was no option for a retrial as the appellants had already been acquitted of murder.

Kirkland, a former student of Immaculate Conception High School, was killed when the cops, who were members of a police team, opened fire on a car in which she was a passenger.

According to the police, the incident began in Portmore, St Catherine, where the robbery of a cellphone occurred during which the victim [of the robbery] was allegedly assaulted.

The perpetrators were supposedly aboard the fated blue Suzuki Swift motor car in which Kirkland was a passenger. The incident was broadcast over the police radio network and shortly after the car was reportedly spotted and followed by the police. A gunfight reportedly started when the car got to Norman Lane in Greenwich Town, near where Kirkland lived.

According to Nelson, she was at her home several streets away when she heard the shots punctuating the night but had no idea her daughter was on the receiving end. She said when a shocked relative mounted her porch to deliver news that her niece, who was in the car, had been shot, a vision of her daughter, whose name had not yet been called, rose up before her sending her to her knees from a pain which whipped her midsection. Moments later her worst fears were realised, she told the Jamaica Observer.

On Monday, Kirkland’s stepfather and four of her nine siblings showed the Observer photographs of the smiling teen that they now cling to even more fiercely, an eight-year-old sibling who was born after the incident confiding that she hoped to follow in her sister’s footsteps academically.

Vanessa’s stepfather, Devon Nelson, took the news calmly, a wave of sadness flooding his dark face, his lips twisting wryly.

Several residents of the gritty community, which is no stranger to death and violent endings, greeted the news of the acquittal with resignation, even while sharing memories of the vivacious teen.

One man, who gave his name as Garth, drink clutched in hand, said he knew Vanessa from she was a tot.

“Mi jus’ a tell the G say is a bright little girl. A while ago we jus’ a look on her picture and it jus’ bring back bare reflections, wi jus’ a reason about her,” he told the Observer.

“I used to live in her yard; me and her brother and sisters and mother get along well. The whole Farm (colloquial name for Greenwich Town) up, down, everybody felt shocked,” he recalled.

Commenting on the judgment of the Appeal Court, he said, “I jus’ a realise when the G a read it on the phone and mi a say, I didn’t hear anything about it from the time.”

Garth’s counterpart, Adam, who read the news to him, recounted, “I normally see her when I used to follow my cousin to bands training. It made me feel sad and down because a somebody that mi know.”

Asked what he thought of the outcome, he pursed his lips before responding pensively “I don’t really have much to say, not much to say about it” while pointing the Observer to a shop where Vanessa was said to frequent with other members of a marching band that comprised residents of Greenwich Town and other communities.

“She’s our sister-in-law, our brother girlfriend,” two women who the Observer approached chorused. They said his tragic end came shortly after Vanessa’s.

“He died about a year after; him get lick down and slam inna the post right here so,” one sister shared.

They said their brother, Romario Cammock, had been grief stricken following the incident.

“He was speechless because he told her not to go. She said she was going with some friends to deliver some fish fry tickets and he told her not to go. It was about two or three girls of them and she went in the car. He was speechless because they were boyfriend and girlfriend all through their high school days and she just died,” one of the women shared.

Describing further how the teen’s death affected her brother, the older sister said “Bad, bad depression, he didn’t talk for couple days well and him just distant, from that happen him just distant.”

“She was a nice sister-in-law, she helped a lot with my schoolwork and everything,” the younger of the two said.

Asked how they felt about the acquittal, she said, “We never expected no better, because a the police she wouldn’t get any justice.”

They further disputed the reports that the car was involved in a robbery the evening of the incident.

“The car left from South Avenue, where she was at the time; it was pure girls, except for the driver, and they went to deliver fish fry tickets and it got shot up. Everybody did shock because she wasn’t involved in wrongdoing. Very jovial, love laugh, always a laugh,” the Observer was told.

Another resident, who said she had been mentored by Vanessa as a younger member of the band, said “We can’t stop grieving. She lives in our memories. I don’t believe we got real justice for her.”

Her voice cracking, she looked skyward as it rained and said,”Look deh, a she goodly a cry now.”

Earlier after the ruling, Jamaica’s chief prosecutor Paula Llewellyn, King’s Counsel, told the Observer, “I think in this very tragic case it would be very appropriate for the authorities to consider making some sort of financial settlement on the estate for wrongful death, if it is that they (family) have not already filed a civil suit.”

She said her office would also be speaking to the family to explain what occurred at the appeal level.

“I think it would be appropriate in such a tragic case, although the law was against the convictions standing, that the authorities make some sort of financial ex-gratia payment for wrongful death at the hands of the State,” the director of public prosecutions said.