Painful memories flood back - Relatives, State pay tribute to children killed tragically
Published:Monday | May 6, 2019 | 12:16 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
Fighting to hold back tears, the mother of 14-year-old Yetanya Francis, whose burnt body was found metres away from her home last August, yesterday joined other grieving parents to lay wreaths at the Crying Child monument at Secret Gardens in downtown Kingston in memory of their children.
Francis, who was a student of the Kingston Technical High School, left her Twelfth Street home in Arnett Gardens, St Andrew, on August 23, last year to purchase food, but never returned.
The next day, her charred remains were found in an open lot.
It is believed that her killers raped her, chopped her in the head, and then set her body on fire.
Speaking with The Gleaner after participating in the brief ceremony put on annually by the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, Francis’ mother, Latoya Riley, said the last eight months have been traumatic.
“Trust me, it’s hard, but I have to try hang on because I also have a 14-year old son,” she said.
“When I come on the road and see the wreaths and so forth, my blood run cold ... because it brings back a lot of memories,” she added.
Francis’ aunt, Claudette Daley, could not hold back the tears as she remembered the teen.
“I miss her and this is how I have to come to represent her, knowing that [I am] not going to see her again. Her life just gone just like that,” Daley said, describing her niece’s killers as animals.
“Animal! I call them animal ‘cause I don’t see where somebody could kill a child, 14 years old. What can a 14-year-old [do to] deserve a tragic death like that?” she questioned as tears streamed down her face.
She added: “She was my little niece. She had manners, respect, love, always make you smile no matter what. If you talk to her and tell her, ‘Listen, I don’t want to see you do this or do that’, she’d say, ‘Yes, aunty, I won’t do it’. It’s not nice, it’s not easy, so it’s painful.”
Oshin Rogers, the mother of the two-year-old twin girls Nahelia and Nahalia Pinnock, who perished in a fire in Grants Pen, St Andrew, on January 28, said she and her family are still finding it difficult to cope.
“I’m trying, I’m trying to be strong,” she told The Gleaner.
The Secret Gardens and Monument was erected in 2008 and has the names of more than 1,000 children who lost their lives under tragic or violent circumstances.