MONTEGO BAY, St James — Monday, January 29 was a difficult day for Rose Sloley. It was the seventh anniversary of the brutal murder of her granddaughter, Shineka Gray, and the family is still reeling from the loss.

“I have a niece that don’t come out of her room. I ask her if she don’t want to get some vitamin D [sunshine]. She not even going to work,” the woman lamented.

She explained that her despondent niece was only a year younger than Shineka, and they had been very close growing up. Shineka was 15 years old at the time of her death in 2017. Both girls lived with Sloley.

“I might have to get some counselling for her because she not coming out, man. The thing really affect her bad,” bemoaned the family matriarch.

And while she worries about other family members Sloley, too, has been having challenges coping. She often mistakenly calls her other grandchildren by the name of their departed family member.

“Sometimes they will say to me, ‘Grandma, why you calling me Shineka?’ “ she said.

She thinks it is because she misses her granddaughter.

“It’s sad, man. It’s really, really sad,” Sloley said.

Last week, Gregory Roberts was found guilty of murdering the teenager. The trial lasted for about two months and it has been tough on the family.

“Right now [Shineka’s] father, my son, not even want to hear about it when we try to talk to him about the verdict,” Sloley told the
Jamaica Observer.

He had been emotionally unable to be in court for the trial, and Shineka’s mother has since migrated. But Sloley and her daughter Nickeda Gray represented the family throughout the ordeal.

Sloley said the family’s faith has helped them cope.

“God has kept us. People see us and ask us how we are so strong but I want to say: ‘God kept us,’ “ she said.

She is upset that the man convicted last week of killing her granddaughter has, in her view, shown no regret.

“We can’t believe what he did to her. And the worst part is when he was being taken out by the police him just ‘cut him eye’ at us — no little remorse,” said Sloley.

“[He should get a] life sentence for this wicked act. Wicked act, man; wicked act,” she railed.

That was the sentence meted out to Roberts’s co-accused Mario Morrison, who pleaded guilty to the teenager’s murder in 2022 in a deal that saw him testifying against Roberts. Morrison is eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

Sloley said while she has forgiven Roberts, he must pay for killing her granddaughter.

“I forgive him even though I want him to get life imprisonment, because guess what? He has to pay for what he did. No sin will be left unpunished; him will have to pay for what he did!” she insisted.

The family had originally intended to hold a memorial service at church to mark Gray’s death on January 28 but they have pushed that back until after March 7.

“I think when the guy get sentence we will keep something for her,” Sloley revealed.

“We [also] want to do something like in aid of a student here where she lived, like a scholarship or something like that,” she added.