A father is fighting to stay strong, having lost three sons to tragic circumstances in the space of almost eight years with the state of the body of his third son at the front of his mind.

Clarence Beckford shared with the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that the third of his sons was killed by the police in Central Village, St Catherine, in May.

Beckford said he was not there when his son was killed by the cops and is not in a position to challenge the circumstances under which he was shot dead.

But he is concerned about the way that his son’s body was stored at a morgue in Spanish Town, St Catherine, which caused it to decompose.

According to Beckford, when he and the son’s mother went to identify his body on the day he was killed, there was no decomposition of the corpse.

He said that when he went back to the morgue recently to check on the body, what he witnessed was horrific.

“I have one child left now, a daughter. Sometimes I feel like I would fall but I hear a voice saying stay strong. I have to fight to stay strong and mi naa drink no rum. My son’s name is Dwayne Beckford. Crazy, Crazy thing a gwaan man.

“He died on May 30 from gunshot. He was at a funeral home from May 30 and when the people doing the autopsy called me and I went back there last week Friday to view the body, it was a different sight,” said Beckford.

“The body decay, the eyes were far away in the head back. It was like a skeleton I was looking at. He had no hair on his head and he was stink. He was just in a bad condition like his body wasn’t stored properly. It was just the goodness of God that allowed me to stand up and face it.

“I asked about it and was told that light went during the Hurricane Beryl. But I am saying that even if light went in the storm, you must have had a standby generator to chip in. You cannot treat people’s body like that,” added Beckford as he charged that there were several other families who faced a similar situation.

“It is not even like it was him alone. People run and bawl when them saw their relatives. A girl went in before me and when she come out and stand up, she had to get assistance to walk go outside because she was on the verge of fainting. Whole heap a family a face the same thing. I would love to take action because it cost me to reconstruct him so that we can look at him. When we first identified him in the morgue, there was no decay.

“His body was spoilt. Something went wrong with the fridge. I understand that they pack their fridge like when you pack bags on top of bags, because they don’t have shelves. I am just tired of the running up and down. I just want to put him down. We are planning the funeral for the 24th of this month,” said Beckford.

“A di third son this me a bury and a me go identify them and they never looked like this. A di first me a see this,” he added.

Beckford said before he lost Dwayne in May, in December 2022 another son Daniel died when the wrecker he was driving, with a forklift aboard, went over a precipice in Sligoville, St Catherine.

Before that, in 2016, his son Sanjay was found hanging from a tree in St Elizabeth where he had gone to visit his grandmother in what was initially believed to be a murder but no one was ever charged as the police suspected it was a case of suicide.