A mother’s horror and pain

IT’S the day after Sharon Thompson laid her three children and unborn grandchild to rest in pretty pink and white coffins adorned with sprays of flowers, inlaid with white silk.

Still trying to put some sort of meaning to what happened, 39 year-old Thompson is on a road less travelled by the average mother.

Thompson’s kids — 15 year-old Shanik Reynolds and three year-old twins Shavanelle (Silk) and Shanice (Satin) Malcolm — were brutally sprayed with bullets while they slept, by a group of callous gunmen in Rema last month.

The searing pain of loss is evident as Thompson greets All Woman and apologises for keeping us waiting. She is at the Trench Town Police Station, a few metres up the road from the ‘big yard’ where she lives, giving a statement on the events that unfolded on that terrifying Friday morning.

“I still can’t believe that they took my babies away from me… that they killed them just like that. I wish with all my heart that I could have my babies with me right now,” she tells All Woman.

But Thompson is emotionally unprepared to outline the details of what happened, so her close friend and confidante, whose name we will not reveal, assumes the role of protector, takes over and gives details of the early morning horror that she herself witnessed.

“It was about 3:45 in the morning, but nobody was sleeping because the shots were firing heavy outside and it sounded near. Then I heard somebody screaming, saying, ‘Lord, somebody help me, they killing off me pickney dem’. I turned to my 19 year-old daughter and said, ‘that sound like Sharon’ and she said, ‘yes’.

“The constant screaming continued and then I heard a knock on my door followed by, (a voice calling her by her nickname) ‘help me!’ My daughter opened the door and Sharon stumbled in. She was trembling and she said, ‘Lord, me pickney dem dead’. I held her tight and said, ‘shhh, stop the noise’, and she say, ‘no, Shanik dead’. I started to pray and I said, ‘God, cover we’.

“We waited until the gunshots sounded far enough away and then we opened the door and went outside. Sharon could not go into her house; she was too afraid so we asked a little youth to go inside. He ran out with ‘Satin’ and say, ‘hold she, she nuh dead yet’, and he ran back inside.

“Sharon grabbed her baby and wrapped her up in the shirt I gave her to put on because she ran over in only her brassiere. Yes, she wrap up ‘Satin’ and told the youth to go back inside and see if ‘Silk’ and Shanik were all right. He came back out and said, ‘boy, Sharon, the two a them dead!’

At this point, Thompson feels strong enough to continue the story.

“I was not even thinking of the others in the house. I hold up ‘Satin’ and I say, ‘baby, put you hand around me neck’ and she raise her left hand and hug me and she looked up at me. I asked somebody to take me to hospital.

“When I reached KPH and the doctor stretch out ‘Satin’ on the bed, all of her intestines were outside. The doctor pronounced her dead and I fainted.

“After I came back around, I went home to the bodies of my other twin, ‘Silk’, and 15 year-old daughter Shanik. I fainted again.”

Since the brutal slaying of her children, Thompson has lost everything she holds dear and precious. Her parental grief is intense and complex. It surfaces once more.

“Nothing in life has any meaning to me right now,” she says. “It’s like I am in a trance, waiting to wake up. I keep questioning myself and thinking ‘Was I a good mother’? Do I deserve to be called mummy’? Perhaps I should not have ran away leaving them in the house, but when I saw the long gun pointing in my face, I ran out for help. I did not know they were going to shoot my children.

“They were special in so many ways,” she says more to herself than to us.

“They were a set of twins, among four other sets of twins living in the same yard, and my twins were special because they were so cute… that’s why they called them ‘Silk’ and ‘Satin’. They were the only set of twins in my family so they were a gift to everybody in the family. Then the pregnancy with them was a difficult one. I was sick all the time. I was hospitalised for three months after having them… so they were closer to me than my other children,” Thompson tells All Woman.

She bemoans the fact that she had done an irreversible operation to tie off her tubes and is unable to have more children.

“I feel so empty without them. I don’t know how to move on. Having them around me made me feel happy, it gave me a purpose in life. Their father died three months after their first birthday. He was shot and killed uptown, and I have struggled all the way with them,” she laments.

Thompson, a self-employed dry goods vendor works in downtown Kingston. She has no other skills, but says that what she earned was enough to care for herself and her children. She is unsure if she will ever go back to work.

“Right now, I am scared. I have not slept in the area since the incident because I don’t really feel safe.”

Her friend agrees, adding that the killing of children by the gun is a totally new experience, one which, she hopes, will never be repeated.

“All of us as women feel a sense of loss, we mourn with Sharon. We have been friends for over 20 years and this has brought us even closer. I have not left her side since it happened, I go everywhere with her and give her as much love as I can.”

The interview comes to an end. There’s heavy gunfire in the distance and both women walk away, oblivious to the explosions.