'This is a real horror story' ... Said dad after identifying body of daughter found in igloo

Mandeville, Manchester:

Approximately three months had passed since he last spoke to his daughter. She had made the decision to move out of the family home and experience life independently, but unbeknown to Dr Pastor Amos Campbell was that he would never see his daughter alive again.

On Tuesday, August 28 at approximately 1:25 a.m., the Manchester police found the body of a woman, with a slashed throat, wrapped in a sheet, in an igloo on the back seat of a Toyota Starlet motor car along Marshall's Pen Road in the parish.

Two days later, fears were confirmed when Pastor Campbell positively identified the body as that of his 25-year-old daughter, Khyhymn Campbell.

"My daughter decided to move out on her own, and whilst her mother and I asked her to wait a while because there was a lot she didn't know about the world, and a lot she needed to learn, because, truthfully, she grew up pretty sheltered, she still decided to move out," the grieving father shared with The Gleaner.

"We didn't really hear from her for the past three months because she wouldn't accept our calls out of, possibly, fear that we would deter her from living away and ask her to move back home."

Campbell said when calls from him and his wife to his daughter went unanswered, he would then ask other immediate family members to reach out to her and they would be successful.

"That's why I knew something was wrong, when all the calls made to her phone, by my wife and I, all other family members and close friends went unanswered. I knew then that I had to go to the police station. After visiting the station, I was taken to the morgue, and it was there that my mind was and will forever be negatively stained. I see that picture every now and again. This whole thing has been a real horror story," he recounted.

INTERESTED IN MEDICINE

Campbell said his daughter, who attended the Bishop Gibson High School and later Northern Caribbean University, was always interested in medicine, but was contemplating a possible switch to education prior to her premature end at the university.

"I wanted for her to be able to complete her studies and hold down a good job before even thinking about moving out on her own, but she made the decision this year, and that is when she was exposed to danger," he said.

"She was a harmless soul and everybody loved her. This has devastated everyone who knew her or simply knew of her, and I don't know why anyone would want to kill her."

The father lamented, "My wife is not taking this well at all. I checked her pressure just recently and she was nearing the stroke line. My son, who had a traumatic ordeal years ago, has ceased to talk, and hearing of this doesn't make it better. I feel like I have lost both my children."

As the tears flowed uncontrollably, Campbell came to the realisation that he would not be able to teach his daughter how to preach, as she had requested some time ago.

"She started taking part in church from she was very young. I baptised her myself when she was 14. At one point, she was the youth president, and under her leadership, the department grew, because she was a people person. She could win you over with a smile and she knew how to engage the young people," Campbell recounted.

At the True Vine True Holiness Ministries, located near the New Green roundabout in the parish, where Campbell pastors, Khyhymn was known as one of the best dancers at church.

"You could call upon her at any time and she would be ready," he said

"But my daughter is gone and it does not get easier. Right now, all I am grateful for is that the killer did not get to dump her body. I am glad it was found."

The police are still on the hunt for the suspect in connection with Khyhymn's murder, Linton Stephenson, aka Jaw Bone, said to be a deacon of a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mandeville and former worker at the Big Rat's Auto Shop.

The police are asking anyone with information on his whereabouts to contact the Mandeville CIB at (876) 962-2832, police 119 emergency number, or the nearest police station.