When gunmen robbed Beverly of the Captain

Beverly remembers the event with amazing clarity.

It was a Friday. June 24. Twelve years ago.

Her husband Captain Desmond Titus, strangely, had not come home that night.

“He would run a taxi on the side but he mostly picked up people he knew,” Beverly recalls.

That day, he wasn’t driving the familiar Hillman Hunter. He had a friend’s car that had been left in his care.

The Captain – that was what everyone called him, the title from his job in the outreach programme in the evangelical arm of the Anglican church – had done the regular things: picking up the children from school, helping plan a church function. The children, Vickki-Anne was 13, Kerrie-Ann, nine and Neil, five.

The family was happy. Up to that Friday when the gregarious captain didn’t come home.

“I immediately knew something was wrong late in the night when he did not return,” says Beverly.

Beverly reported the Captain missing before the stipulated 24 hours had passed. She knew her man and that it would be out of character for him not to call if he was late.

At first, according to Beverly, the police dismissed her report.

“They changed their tune when the Bishop called,” she says.

The police subsequently delivered the news she did not want to hear. On Father’s Day, June 21, a body, in an advanced state of decomposition had been found in a manhole in the Downtown area. They called her to the scene without preparing her for what she was about to see.

Two days later, on what would have been their 14th wedding anniversary, Beverly buried the ashes of her husband.

She was left suddenly to ponder why her husband, a fun-loving man, with lots of friends, was so cruelly taken away.

The children too, were left with the pain.

No longer would Captain, in his Hillman Hunter, be seen heading to his various school engagements across the island. Some persons might remember him as the man strumming the guitar with Miss Lou on Ring Ding, leading a sing-along.

At 35, Beverly, a teacher with three children, was not only the main breadwinner, but in the past the Captain had taken care of everything. She would now have to take over all the roles.

But at first the environment was almost surreal. Beverly recalls that she did not cry – not even during the two memorial services for the captain.

“Persons said I was in shock,” she says. “So they took me to the doctor so that he would give me some medication.”

Although she was not sleeping, she insisted that she was fine.

The fact that there was support helped. There were friends like the playwright, Basil Dawkins as well as Beverly’s mother, sisters and brothers. The Captain’s relatives and friends were also there.

It took a few weeks for the realisation of the loss to really hit home. It came during the funeral of the husband of one of Beverly’s friends. Her friend’s husband had also been murdered.

“Her husband died in an almost similar way to mine and I went to the funeral and I broke down,” Beverly recalls. “I cried and cried and she was not crying. Everybody thought that it was my husband that had died.

“I was also crying for my husband at the time. That was the first time that I really cried and I just could not stop. It was two weeks after my husband was killed.”

The pain intensified when Beverly and the children were back at home, alone after the funeral.

At the time they lived in a four-bedroom house on Lindsay Crescent. The house belonged to the Anglican Diocese.

“Here we were, four of us, sleeping in one room,” she says. “The kids were afraid to go to their rooms. Four of us in one bed for two weeks and no one was sleeping.”

The immediate impact of her husband’s death was cushioned to an extent by the fact that although circumstances had changed, Beverly and the children were not in immediate danger of dire poverty.

The Diocese would allow her a year in the house, and established a fund to provide for the children for the duration of high school. There was another piece of luck. Shortly after the Captain’s death, Beverly applied through the National Housing Trust for a mortgage and home. Within three months she got a house and was able to use the funds from the Captain’s life insurance policy to finance its upgrade.

Yet building a new life would still take courage, which Beverly did not know she had.

“I managed to shock myself,” she says.

She coped, in part, by keeping busy, focusing on her children and their needs.

Shortly after the funeral Beverly threw herself back into work at the Rollington Town Primary School, having refused the leave that had been offered.

She also resolved to work overseas during the summers, leaving her children in the care of their grandmother and uncle.

It was not all easy sailing because whereas the girls adjusted to their father’s death Neal, the youngest, took it very hard. Neil and his dad had been extremely close.

“Everywhere you saw Desmond (the Captain), he was with him,” she says. ” He was such a quiet and nice child. When Desmond died he became very aggressive at school. He said he wanted to be a policeman so that he could kill all bad people.”

Thankfully, she says, his school at the time got Neil counselling. “He was OK after a while,” Beverly says. Neil is now a sixth form student at Ardenne High School.

As she tells her story, she pauses to think of how different life could have been for her children had her husband’s life been spared.

Prior to her husband’s murder, the children were involved in several after-school activities. Both girls were promising swimmers representing Jamaica on numerous occasions.

Their many medals decorating the living room wall tell of the potential.

However, they had to give up this activity. Over time the violin lessons went, too. The family couldn’t afford it.

Nevertheless, the girls turned out quite fine, Beverly says.

Vickki-Anne is now a teacher at a high school, while, Kerrie-Ann, is a student at MICO Teachers’ College.

“I wanted them to come out to something and they have,” says Beverly.

As for the men who snuffed out her husband’s life, they were never brought to trial. Beverly always wanted to know who they were.

“I eventually heard not too long after that they were deportees, and they wanted the car that my husband was driving. Maybe he would be alive if he was driving his own.

“They took the car to commit a murder. I heard that they were caught and killed. But I was disappointed because I wanted to find out why. The news sort of brought some closure.”

Beverly’s life changed again recently. She found new love and was married 11 months ago. She did not date for seven years after the Captain’s murder.

“I did not have time for dating,” she says. “I was too busy. Plus I wanted to wait until the children were older.”

As for her advice to others who have lost their loved ones to violence, prayer helps, says Beverly. And don’t lose faith.

“I always take something positive from bad things,” she says. “Always keep busy. You don’t have time to think or mope.”