Teen chopped to death

Fifteen-year-old Kevin McKenzie had been looking forward to the start of the new academic year next Monday.

His mother, Marcia Brissett, told The Gleaner that she had already bought Kevin’s school shoes despite the uncertainty as to when face-to-face classes would resume at Spanish Town High.

But those hopes were dashed yesterday after Kevin was brutally attacked and chopped to death a stone’s throw away from his Jones Avenue home in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

The police report that about 7:30 a.m., residents heard screams coming from a nearby riverbank, and on checking, they found Kevin with chop wounds all over his body and his head severed.

The quiet teenager, who community members said was always smiling and wanted to become a soldier, had left his home to throw away trash when he was attacked.

Yesterday, when The Gleaner visited the community, Kevin’s mother and sister Kimberly McKenzie bewailed the savage manner in which he was murdered.

The grieving mother, who had been anxiously waiting for her son to return, said she stumbled upon his body after going in search of him when residents said they had just heard gunshots in the area.

“When mi go down deh go look, mi see him lie down and like him head come off and him hand chop up,” Brissett said through tears.

“And mi try so hard, mi try so hard, and the devil tek him wey from mi.

“Dat a one baby. From you see him, you see seh a pickney. If him did a come a road and in a wrongdoings, mi would a understand, but mi do mi best fi him nuh come road and dem still tek him from mi,” she said.

Before the incident, Brissett said she had got up early to kill chickens and was planning to send her son to collect bags by their neighbour’s house, but told him to go and brush his teeth instead.

She went for the bags and on her return, she enquired whether he had brushed his teeth and was told that he was going to do it now.

However, she said while she was outside lighting a fire, her son left to empty the rubbish.

She returned inside and when she did not hear or see him, after calling out, she heard of the gunshots.

“It’s very sad what happen. It shake up everybody as KJ was a very loving and caring boy. A nuh pickney weh mix up. The woman grow up har pickney dem good,” uttered one woman, who was among residents gathered expressing shock and sadness at the murder.

“Everybody very emotional right now because he is a very jovial likkle boy,” another said. “When him pass you, him salute everybody. If yuh is a male, him call you ‘uncle’. He is very mannerable and jovial.”

St Catherine North Police Commander Senior Superintendent Howard Chambers said no motive has been established for the killing as yet. Neither have they identified a suspect.

However, Chambers said that the police have not ruled out the possibility that it could have been a reprisal hit for the fatal shooting of a man identified only as J.J. on Sunday night in the nearby Shelter Rock community.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com