Forever absent
Slain 3-y-o was slated for first day at infant school today
Published:Monday | April 25, 2022 | 12:09 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner
WESTERN BUREAU:
WHEN CLASSES resume today, three-year-old Kamoill Williams Jr will not be able to occupy the desk and chair reserved for him at Brownsville Primary and Infant School in Cascade, Hanover.
Kamoill succumbed to gunshot injuries he sustained in a drive-by attack in the generally peaceful community last week.
“It’s this Monday (April 25) that he should have started school. I bought everything for him,” Kamoill Williams Sr said of his only child, who had recently been enrolled at Brownsville.
“I got his school shoes and bag, everything he needed for school was already prepared, and now he will not get the opportunity to attend,” the mournful dad said during a Gleaner interview.
Kamoill Jr and 27-year-old Tavares Stevens, otherwise called ‘T’, were shot and killed, allegedly by contract killers, in Hilloughby district.
Reports by the Lucea police are that about 7:10 p.m., Stevens, Kamoill, and another male were among a group of persons at a shop when occupants of a Toyota Axio motor car rolled down their windows and opened fire at them.
The third victim remains in hospital.
Serona Gowans-Ragbeer, acting principal of Brownsville Primary and Infant School, said that Kamoill’s death has pained the hearts of her administration and rocked the entire community.
“I am not fully acquainted with the child who was expected to begin school tomorrow (Monday). However, as a school family, we are deeply touched by his sudden passing,” Gowans-Ragbeer said Sunday.
Estar Wynter, chairman of the school’s board of management, said the Cascade community is under a heavy and dark cloud.
“The school will regret not being able to have the opportunity to nurture him, but because he did not start, the effect of his death will not be that great. But it has affected the entire life of the community,” Wynter told The Gleaner.
“He is somebody who we all know. If he had started it would be more devastating and we would have to get counselling for the children and the teachers, but he did not start,” said Wynter, who also lives in the community.
The traumatised father is at a loss as to why his only child was attacked. Williams said despite his best efforts to save Kamoill Jr, he was forced to run for his own life.
“I panicked because my son and I were walking down the road, and suddenly, a car drove up and started firing gunshots, and when I grabbed for his hand in order to run, he dropped, and then I had to just run off and leave him,” said Williams.
“I could not pick him up, and now he is dead. It just feels so bad,” the grieving single father said.
Merl Lewis told The Gleaner that the other deceased, Tavares Stevens, was loved by the community.
“All I can say is that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Lewis. “I am going to miss him. He was a good boy, my favourite grandson. I raised him from when he was a child until he became a big man and lived on his own,” Lewis said.