PAGEE, St Mary — As he prepared a meal for his jailed son on Friday, Phillip Reddix was on the verge of tears. He wondered if he had been home two days earlier, as scheduled, three-year-old Asher Campbell would still be alive today. He also wondered what had gone so horribly wrong with his own son, 33-year-old Devon Williams, who is now charged with murder and wounding with intent.

“Mi still cyaan get mi head ’round it,” the distraught man told the Jamaica Observer.

“Him call me and seh him coming to check me. I wasn’t home; I had gone to Galina to deliver some things,” Reddix added mournfully.

Williams returned to Jamaica two weeks ago from the United States, where his mother lives. He has her last name.

“Is my second child; he grew up here before going to foreign. I used to send him to Iona Prep [School]. He never gave me any trouble; quiet youth,” said Reddix, his voice betraying a wistful yearning for those days.

He said his son had been employed before leaving Jamaica, and he made a living from doing construction work when he was in the US. He proudly spoke of the regular trips Williams made to visit him in Jamaica.

Then he turned up unexpectedly.

“It was when he was at the airport he called me to pick him up,” Reddix told the Sunday Observer, adding that he was called because of the exorbitant amount his son was being told it would cost to charter a taxi to St Mary.

“A me pick him up, and him deh yah good, good,” he said.

Asked if he was aware his son had mental challenges, he explained that Williams was fine until he was stabbed in the US.

According to Reddix, Williams’ friends had an altercation with a group of men who later showed up at their house.

“His friends were not at the house, only him. Knowing that is not him and them have anything, he never ran. One of them stab him in his neck with a screwdriver. It look like from there things don’t go right with him” Reddix told the Sunday Observer.

He stressed, however, that while his son was on medication after the incident he showed no signs of mental disorder.

“His mother said he was good,” Reddix insisted.

He said when Williams arrived in Jamaica his mother called to say her son had forgotten his medication and she would be sending them to him. Up to the time of the attack that left a child dead, the medication had not arrived.

“My mother used to say: ‘If one of your fingers spoil, there’s nothing you can do about it.’ It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it,” said a resigned Reddix.

According to the Port Maria police, between 3:30 pm and 4:00 pm on Wednesday, little Asher was walking with family members in Pagee when he was attacked by a man wielding an iron pipe and a knife.

As they tried to stop the attack the boy’s mother and five others were chopped and hit on different parts of their bodies. The injured include Asher’s nine-year-old sister, who received a wound to her left hand; her mother, 45-year-old Phillipa Walker, who received a laceration to her right hand; 58-year-old Phillip Brown, who received stab wounds to his face and lacerations to both hands; 61-year-old Michael Brown, who was hit in his head and on his fingers; and 56-year-old David “Choppa John” Waugh, who is a newspaper vendor and labourer.

On Thursday, Waugh described the horrific attack.

“I was delivering fish, and when I reached the yard gate to drop off the fish I just feel a stab inna mi neck,” he told the Observer.

He said he turned around and saw a man he did not recognise.

“Mi see the man cross him hands like a Muslim, and then him say, ‘Allah, Allah, I need to kill this man’. The man is a cultist,” Waugh related.

He said he later realised that his attacker, who continued to hit him, is the son of a man he considers a friend.

“Me and the man father were at the seaside in the morning; a mi friend. We are fishermen and good a sea, and now this happen,” said Waugh.

The attack has sent shock waves through the usually quiet community and renewed calls for proper care of mentally ill individuals.