TRAGIC

Seventeen-year-old Shedeque Alisia Calvert had plans to visit a tax office to get a taxpayer registration number (TRN) on Monday to register for a HEART/NSTA Trust cosmetology course.

Given that her father’s name was not documented on her birth certificate and her mother left Jamaica when she was one year old, the teenager was denied a TRN on a previous attempt to get the document.

This time around, she was well prepared. A justice of the peace had signed a declaration form in addition to her application form, attesting that she lived with her father and caregiver.

Shedeque tucked all the necessary documents into an orange folder and placed them in her JanSport knapsack in preparation for the trip.

However, all those plans came to a bloody end about 1:10 a.m. on Sunday when according to the police, the teen was allegedly stabbed in the chest during an altercation in the informal community in which she lived along Barry Street in Kingston.

Up to late Sunday night, detectives from the Elletson Road Police Station were trying to locate her father, who they believe stabbed her.

Shedeque’s aunt, Tracey-Ann – who assisted the father with care and protection of Shedeque in the last 16 years in the absence of her biological mother – said she is unsure of exactly who stabbed the child.

In an interview with The Gleaner mere hours after the girl was pronounced dead upon arrival at hospital on Sunday morning, Tracey-Ann said that Shedeque had a dispute with someone who lives in the same community, about 20 minutes before another altercation with her father.

“She and him have an altercation out deh – physical altercation – so somebody come in here and call mi and seh, ‘Go fi yu niece ‘cause she and di people dem inna altercation’,” she recalled.

“Mi never know seh di father inna di house a listen di conversation. Him just wake up out a him sleep. Him come to me and seh, ‘Weh she deh?’” Tracey-Ann added.

She said that she told him that Shedeque was outside.

When the teen came into their yard, Tracey-Ann said she told her father that she was “feeling cold” before he became angry and started scolding her regarding the dispute she was just having.

“She seh, ‘Daddy! Mi nuh do nothing!’ Mi seh, ‘You too lie! Talk di truth!’ [Then] she run gone. Mi see him put on him socks and him shoes and then one youth come and seh, ‘Yow! You daughter nah breathe! She a [gasp]!’

“So mi nuh know what took place inna di dark. Dem seh she get stab, and di youth turn to him (father) and seh, ‘Yuh stab yuh daughter?!’ and him seh, ‘No!’. So mi seh to him, ‘Yuh stab Shedeque?’ Him seh, ‘No!’,” she said.

Tracey-Ann said that in the sudden moment of chaos, she could only think of grabbing her kitchen towel before running towards her niece to assist. She said that when she then lifted the girl’s blouse, she saw a wound over her left breast and applied pressure to reduce blood loss.

“Mi nuh know a who stab her,” said the aunt.

Tracey-Ann said that Shedeque, who should now be in fifth form at the Tivoli Gardens High School, had stopped attending school when classes moved online during the pandemic, but she was encouraged to return. She never did.

Tracey-Ann said that after the child was pronounced dead, her father told other relatives that he would commit suicide and then disappeared.

She is pleading for him to return home and persons who witnessed the two altercations to give statements to the police and cooperate with the investigation.

“When we get the call that she don’t make it, everybody distraught and her father tek weh himself,” a cousin told The Gleaner on Sunday.

“It’s still shocking,” another cousin said. “It still don’t feel real because she always deh a road. It feel like she out de so. She nuh stay in a house, and if she do stay in ya, a fi couple minutes and then she gone back again. It feel like she de a road a do some form of hair. People used to call her on link her on Instagram to do their hair, so she go all ‘bout.”

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com