Reliving grief of losing a cherished son every New Year’s Day

While persons across the world ushered in the new year with excitement and joy at midnight on Sunday, Donovan McLaren spent it embracing the painful reminder of the murder of his son, Stephan, on New Year’s Day in 2017.

The start of each new year will forever be a painful reminder for McLaren, given that the then 17-year-old was murdered on Hagley Park Road mere hours after attending a New Year’s watchnight at an entertainment establishment with a fellow cricketer from his school and friends.

McLaren was a promising school cricketer in sixth form at Calabar High School when he was murdered.

It was reported that Stephan was walking with a group of friends when he stopped along the roadway to urinate. One of his friends said soon after, Stephan rushed to them complaining that he had been stabbed.

His father said six years later, the initial pain he felt when he heard the gruesome news still lingers inside him and nothing is being done about the case.

“Mi feel cut up; everything that is bad. Right away, mi not even want to hash up back dat de sitn de. Today, would have been the day [of the anniversary for my son’s death] but it nuh pretty, so it nuh mek no sense,” McLaren told The Gleaner on New Year’s Day.

McLaren’s reality is a harsh one many Jamaican parents whose children had been slain now face, as there are no eyewitnesses who have come forward, there is no lead and the assailants are not known.

The father said he has been all over in the last five years including the Office of the Public Defender and other places he was referred, but nothing has become of the death of his son, and he has thrown in the towel.

“A bare runaround mi did a get, so mi can’t bother ... Nothing nuh come out of it. No one got arrested. No eyewitness came forward,” McLaren said.

McLaren said he is trying very hard to forget about the tragic event as a mere reflection of how his son died only stirred bitterness in his heart.

The devastated father said his son’s mother, Evelyn Burton, was not coping, and she has left the island as a result, and he too is thinking of moving soon to rid himself of the past.

In March 2017 after Stephan’s death, the police commemorated his life by renaming Peace Day in his honour, as Peace Day Stephan McLaren National Safe Schools Day. This would have formed part of the National Safe Schools’ Initiative. The grieving father does not know if this has continued six years on.

In 2017, at the slain teen’s funeral, Sergeant Tanecia Johnson, then coordinator of the National Safe Schools’ Initiative, told mourners that McLaren was a well-mannered young man, before making the announcement of the Stephan McLaren National Safe Schools Day.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com