BICKERSTETH, St James — Residents of this rural community on Tuesday struggled to understand why a seven-year-old was found dead in bushes near his mother’s house, with wounds to his head and blood oozing from his nose and mouth.

United in grief and shock, most did not want to be identified by name as they gathered at a community shop and spoke of the incident.

One man, who identified himself as a relative of young Aiden, said the boy’s mother told them how she discovered his body about 6:00 am.

“She go a pipe, seh she a brush her teeth and she see a man a pass. After she see the man a pass she seh, ‘Look, a what dat dung deh so’. A down deh so behind the tree dem see the little youth fold up down deh,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“Fly a take the youth and the youth belly start swell,” the relative added, distraught.

According to the man, neighbours last saw little Aiden on Sunday. That is the day his mother went to Cambridge to get him. Ever since he was three months old he had lived in Cambridge with his stepfather and his stepfather’s mother, Sandra Bartley.

“I did not hear anything else until this morning when she call and say if Aiden up here,” Bartley told the Observer.

“When she wake this morning, she nuh see Aiden on the bed so she beg a call and call me and mi say no [I didn’t see him]… She call back and say, ‘Auntie, Auntie, Aiden dead!’ And mi bawl out now and wake up everybody,” Bartley explained.

“Every part of me cut up… what could Aiden possible do for somebody to lick Aiden them way deh. The boy is so nice to me, sometime him hug mi up tight and say, ‘Auntie mi love you’,” she said, her voice thick with grief.

Also among those left mourning on Tuesday were Aiden’s classmates. He was in the first grade at Bickersteth Primary School.

“The school is really suffering from this loss. It was only two weeks ago that one of our teachers lost her husband in an accident, so we are going through a serious period of mourning,” said Principal Robert Gordon.

According to Acting Police Chief for the St James Division, Superintendent Carlos Russell, they have not at this point ruled the boy’s death a murder but simply a death being investigated. He confirmed that a relative was taken in for questioning.

On Tuesday, Bartley spoke of how much Aiden’s mother had loved her child.

“She really loved Aiden, always a talk ’bout her one son and I have to remind her sometime that she have a daughter, who is my granddaughter as well,” she said.