GRANGE HILL, Westmoreland — Kerrick Moodie, believed to have been killed and buried in a shallow grave with his sister Keneisha by gangsters who recorded the act, was so fond of his sibling that he told their mother they would likely die together. The bond between them was so strong that the 20-year-old ignored his mother’s repeated warnings to stay away from his 22-year-old sister who had a dark past.

According to Stephany Edwards, each time her daughter — who they called Stephy — was around, 20-year-old Kerrick would “deh behind a har”.

“One day I even said to him, ‘You give the woman no privacy. You sleep all in your sister bed, you and your sister sleep. And he said, ‘Mommy, anywhere Stephy dead mi a dead’,” the distraught mother told the Jamaica Observer on Monday. “That’s what that little boy said to me and it’s in my brain and it’s proven right now. That’s the love that the two a them have. So if them did even hold Stephy and a do something to she and tell him fi go, him never did a go leave.”

She is still awaiting word from the police on whether her children’s bodies have been found. She reported them missing from their Brompton, St Elizabeth, house last Saturday. On Sunday she said familiar body marks had her convinced they were the ones on the horrific video making the rounds on social media.

“Had he stayed with me in Grange Hill he would still be alive,” said a mournful Edwards.

The single mother of five said she was unaware of her son being involved in criminal activity before his disappearance. She said she struggled to provide for all her children, doing odd jobs to make ends meet, and she encouraged them to find jobs. She often told Kerrick to “go look work to better off your life”.

If he had only listened, she said, he would be “safe” today. Her children knew she did not condone illegal activity, she stressed.

The 54-year-old mother said she tried to get Kerrick to enrol in HEART/NSTA Trust to learn a skill and bought him clothes to wear to classes but he never went. He was supposed to sit Caribbean Examination Council exams during the COVID-19 pandemic but he didn’t follow through, though he dreamt of being an architect.

“Him can do welding and him do architect, him can draw well,” she said proudly of her son who attended Godfrey Stewart High School in the parish.

According to deputy superintendent of police (DSP) in charge of operations in the Westmoreland Police Division, Adrian Hamilton, Kerrick was not on the police’s radar. But his sister was out on bail after she was charged with illegal possession of ammunition. The case, Hamilton said, is still before the court and one condition of her bail was that she should stay away from Grange Hill, Westmoreland. Before that, Keneisha was among several individuals charged with being a member of the notorious King Valley Gang in Grange Hill. She was later acquitted.

The DSP said the search for the siblings continues; so too does the effort to dismantle the gangs.

“We appeal to the young men and women in Grange Hill, in particular, and the wider Westmoreland, by extension, to desist from becoming a part or assist in engaging — no matter how superficial— in the pursuits of these vicious gang members,” Hamilton urged.

The circulation of the viral video of what the siblings’ mother fears is their murder came just hours after the fresh imposition of a state of public emergency in the parish as a way to address a surge in criminal activity.

According to DSP Hamilton, the parish has recorded 112 murders since the start of the year; 23 fewer than the corresponding period last year.

“Westmoreland has [developed] a murder culture where people kill for little or nothing. These are the people we have grown that are now eating us up within the parish,” he bemoaned.