MONTEGO BAY, St James — With one student dead and the teenager accused of killing him freed by the courts on Monday, the Irwin High School community in St James is working on healing, at least as much as it can in extremely difficult circumstances.

“As we heal as a community and as a school we look forward to… taking the lessons that were learnt from what occurred,” said a school official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“We are focused on teaching the students, of course, about conflict management, and [encouraging them] to focus on being children and excelling in their educational pursuits,” he added.

Irwin High shot to national infamy on April 18 when 15-year-old Raneil Plummer was stabbed in the chest by a fellow student in the vicinity of the school. He later died at hospital, plunging the school into mourning.

“The students at the institution were indeed traumatised but we have put measures in place to ensure that something like this does not reoccur,” the school official told the
Jamaica Observer.

“We have put in programmes, especially behaviour modification and identification programmes, and we are working closely with the police in terms of putting measures in place. Some are already instituted,” he added.

As part of the healing process, students last week received a red-carpet welcome to mark the new academic year, the school’s 20th anniversary.

“It’s a sign that the school has lifted its morals, lifted its pride, and we are looking at this — our 20th year — to institute all the great things that Irwin High School was founded on,” said the school official.

Even as they look ahead, they will make a concerted effort to keep young Plummer’s memory alive, especially through football, which he enjoyed.

There are also ongoing efforts to support his grieving relatives with Plummer’s mother Stacy Ann Dunkley identified as one of those needing special support.

“My son bury around my house back; that’s all I can look on. I pray to God and I wish I was the last mother on this earth to go through what I went through,” she told the
Observer.

“You hear [of grief] but you don’t really understand. When you feel it yourself, oh my,” Dunkley moaned.

She said her grief had made her contemplate suicide, but she resisted the urge.

“I wanted to die because of the amount of pain I was feeling; I wanted to die,” she revealed.

“I stood up in Montego Bay and see a trailer coming on the highway and the devil tell me, ‘Step out in the road, Stacy and make the trailer just lick you… and you wouldn’t feel any more pain.’ But I said, ‘No, I have my other children to live for so I can’t do that’. ”

Dunkley said she only gets some sort of relief from her sorrow during slumber.

“The only time I don’t think about my son is when I am sleeping — and even when I am sleeping I’m dreaming about my son — so, just imagine that pain night, morning, evening, every day. Nothing at all I can’t do but think about my son. Sometimes I have to wonder if I am going insane,” she lamented.

“I could be hungry and as soon as I take two fork or two spoons, my son just come in my mind and I have to put it down,” she continued.

She said the pain is worse because the person accused of killing her son has walked free.

“There is no justice system in Jamaica. Them kill my son — one stab in his heart — and him get free,” Dunkley said.

“Everybody mad, sad, people crying; people in my community, they can’t believe. But what is done is already done, we can’t do anything about it,” added Dunkley.