A St Mary man is grief stricken following the stabbing death of his 16 year old son who a woman in the community had threatened to kill.
The incident took place Thursday, May 19, near Highgate.
Residents of the Lewis Store and Bromley communities in the parish are puzzled and hurt over the death of the boy who was helpful and humble.
Devaro Gardner, 15, a student of the Jamaica Foundation for Life Long Learning in Highgate, had recently moved with his father Cedrick Gardner, from Bromley to a neighbouring community called Top Belfield.
THE PHONE CALL
Devaro’s father, Cedrick explained to North Coast Times that he was at a woman’s house in the community when he got a phone call from his female neighbour. That phone call changed his life forever.
“She (the woman) say ‘Cedrick me ago kill yuh bwoy because him bus up mi son head with a stone’,” Mr Gardner said with grief still etched in his voice, in speaking to the North Coast Times.
He continued to relate that he saw Devaro shortly after the phone call and questioned him about the allegation by the woman. However, he said the boy denied the allegations being made against him and he went away into the bushes, according to Mr Gardner.
Mr Gardner said he left the house on his bicycle and went down the road about a mile where he met the woman with her six-year-old son that Devaro was accused of hitting.
“I saw no cut or buss in his head,” Mr Gardner asserted.
He said the woman said she was going to the police station.
SHE SAID SHE STABBED HIM
Mr Gardner said that sometime after, the woman, who is alleged to be 36-years-old, returned to Top Belfield with a knife in her hand and was quarrelling.
“She say she stab him,” he said quoting the woman as saying she had stabbed the boy and didn’t care.
Mr Gardner said he did not believe that what she said was true.
Mr Gardner said he later left his house and went down the road, but he soon got another life changing phone call, telling him his son had been taken to the Annotto Bay Hospital.
The incident occurred around 4:30 p.m., according to police reports. Reports further suggested that the 36-year-old woman and Devaro got into a dispute after she approached him with the allegations that he had hit her son.
NICE AND HUMBLE YUTE
Mr Gardner said that when he arrived at the hospital, he was directed to a room where he saw his son “catching his breath” and the doctors working hard to save his life.
But the son he described as a nice, humble and respectful youth, succumbed to the stab wound later that evening. According to Mr Gardner, his son had received a stab wound to the right side of his chest.
“Mi asking the Lord to give me the strength, because it is ruff. Mi haffi call upon him more time. It’s hard, hard. My heart is bleeding now,” he said.
Devaro was the fourth of five children he had and the last with his wife, who had died when Devaro was only two-years-old.
“I raise him you know and because of foolishness, mi son dead,” added Mr Gardner, who explained that family members were finding it difficult to deal with.
The woman, who is alleged to have committed the stabbing, was taken into custody on the evening of the incident last Thursday. She is being held at the Castleton police station pending the completion of investigation into the murder.
Reports have surfaced that the woman’s son was taken to the hospital, where he received stitches for a head wound.
