‘Take time to heal’

The son of Terry-Ann Mohammed, one of six persons killed in a moment of unimaginable brutality in St Thomas 16 years ago, still finds himself smothering the flickering flame of revenge burning inside.

Memories of the 2006 bloodbath came flooding back with the massacre of a family of five, including four children, in the rural district of Cocoa Piece, Clarendon, on Tuesday.

Mohammed’s son, who requested that his name not be published, was only 12 when his mother, brother, and four cousins had their throats slashed by mass murderer Michael McLean.

Few understand the scale and intensity of that day’s trauma as the now 28-year-old man.

“Take time to heal,” he said in a Gleaner interview Thursday, giving advice to Gwendolyn McKnight, mother of Kemesha Wright, 31, who was slaughtered alongside her children – Kimanda Smith, 15, Sharalee Smith, 12, Rafaella Smith, 5, and 23-month-old Kishawn Henry Jr – days ago.

“Until you lose a family, like that family, me and them can sit down and hold a reason. Dem know the pain. Until you feel that pain, you nah go understand. Nobody pon di outside nah go understand. Dem might have little sympathy, but them nuh know weh yuh really a go through.”

Like the Wright household, Patrice Martin-McCool and children Lloyd McCool, Jihad McCool, Sean Chin, and Jesse O’Gilvie were all found with their throats slashed in Duhaney Pen, St Thomas, in February 2006.

Time heals all wounds, the old proverb says, but Mohammed’s son said that the salve for those pangs will not offer relief soon enough for those left behind in Cocoa Piece.

He was transferred from Seaforth High in a bid to shield him from the knowing stares of his peers to Titchfield High in the neighbouring parish of Portland. There he received counselling, but that intervention failed, he said.

His youth was defined by anger and anxiety, he said. And in adulthood, he has become somewhat of a recluse.

“It a go take them about a good 10 years,” the young man said of his estimation of the healing period for the relatives of the Cocoa Piece victims.

“Mi paranoid through the whole of school. Suspend and all type of things. ... It put me inna rage,” he added, referencing his reaction to slurs about his mother.

He and a younger brother might have been victims of Michael McLean’s rage, but they did not return to that location after taking groceries home.

Witnessing six coffins at the funeral is a heartbreaking memory that still haunts him. His mother’s was the only coffin that remained closed from onlookers during the viewing.

“Fi look pon six casket one time nuh nice, plus fi know say mi mother deh deh so and her casket lock. She burn out. From her breasts to her waist gone,” he said.

McLean, his mother’s lover, was sentenced at the age of 50 in 2018 to six life sentences.

He is to spend 60 years behind bars before becoming eligible for parole.

But Mohammed’s son is disturbed that McLean did not get the death penalty. And he is calling for action from the country’s lawmakers as he wants callous murderers hanged.

“The death penalty fi come back. Anyhow dem have death penalty, all them thing yah you see ... woulda gone – once a man know say if fi him name call pon a murder,” he said.

He is also not surprised that history has repeated itself with yet another massacre of children and their mother.

“You have to expect mass murder to how Jamaica a run. Me not even go road. Nobody nuh come a me yard – only when mi go buy something,” he said.

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com