The mother of escaped high-profile prisoner and multiple murder accused, Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles, has denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of her son, stating that while she always tried to attend court on the days her son made appearances, she was not at the court on the day he escaped, contrary to what the police claimed.
The woman said she had heard in media reports that the police wanted her and her 16-year-old daughter for questioning and she planned to go to the police station tomorrow. She insisted that she was at work when her son’s case was called on Wednesday last, and later met her daughter at the Camp Street prison where she was waiting for her son to return from court as she had taken food for him.
The woman, who preferred that her name not be mentioned, visited Stabroek News and expressed her frustration at the turn of events. She said her son was not the type of person who would make contact with her following what he did since he knew her temperament very well.
“He wouldn’t dare call me, because he know how I stay and this whole thing is stressful and is frustrating me. But I don’t know nothing about his plan to get away because it is not something I would support. I don’t know how and where the police got information that me and my daughter was at the court on that day. We were not there,” the distraught woman declared.
Recounting the events of that day, the woman told this newspaper that she was at work when she received a call from her daughter who said she was heading to the Camp Street prison to await her brother’s return and would take her little brother with her.
“It was 2:18 because my phone record the time. I was still at work and she call and I tell she alright and she tell me she will carry she small brother and so I tell she good and that I will meet them there. After work I went down there and we were standing waiting for the van that does bring them to come in,” the woman recounted. She could not remember the exact time that she reached her children at the prison.
She said she, her daughter and her son stood there for some time before they saw the vehicle arrive. Usually ‘Skinny’ would call out to them once he saw them, but she heard nothing when the vehicle passed, she said, but did not worry since she did not rule out the possibility that he might have arrived in an earlier batch.
The woman said her daughter had proceeded to the prison gate even though she told the girl to hold on a bit. “Then I see she coming back and I turn and I tell she ‘you see they mussy not ready’ and so we still stand up outside the prison,” she said.
The woman said that a few moments later, a prison officer called her to the prison entrance. “He ask me if I is not ‘Skinny’ mother and so I tell he yes and that is when he tell me that ‘Skinny’ getaway. I stand up there and is like I nearly tumble down because I couldn’t believe it. We just stand up stiff and I ask myself is how this boy gon do this to me because is sheer frustration for me and this whole thing already been stressing the entire family out,” she said.
The woman said he had no choice but to return to her Brutus Street home where she found her padlock and staple removed from her door. She said she subsequently heard that the police were looking for her and her daughter.
“But we did not move out or abandon our home. My daughter had left home to go to Camp Street and I was at work, Nobody ain’t move out,” she said.
‘I don’t know’
The mother of four, Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles being her eldest, told this newspaper she brought up all her children on her own and her son had displayed wayward tendencies from an early age. She said he was not a disrespectful child but had become hard to control at one time after he took up gambling.
She said Jermaine attended St Ann’s Primary in Agricola and after he wrote ‘Common Entrance’, he was awarded a place at Kingston Community High School. He dropped out at third form.
She didn’t give a clear reason for his dropping out but said her son started to gamble with older boys in the community and spent extremely long hours in a gambling den in the village.
“Many time I used to have to go and call him out from the gamble house and it used to be he and a wild set of boys. One time I get so fed up that I call the police and I make them lock him up to teach him an example, because it’s this type of behaviour displaying today that I was trying to avoid,” the woman said.
She also recounted that her son had taken on odd jobs, but the other older boys in the community used to always tease him telling him, “Boy why you wuking for them lil bit money? Boy is wuh you deh pun?”
Asked about the possibility of her son being involved in the high-profile killings for which he has been charged, the woman said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I heard the talk about him being part of a gang too. But I really don’t know.”
She added that from an early age when she started to voice her disapproval of his gambling habit, “‘Skinny’ had moved out from me long and stopped at different friends” and at times she hardy saw him.
“He moved out and sometimes if I coming home from work and walking in the street and he see me coming he would run away because he used to call me ‘ rowy’ ‘cause he say I always rowing,” she recounted.
The woman recounted too days when her son was still at school and he would go to collect her at the road head to accompany her home late at nights. “Sometimes I used to have to work double hours and Jermaine wouldn’t know that I ain’t coming home and he would stay out there waiting late. When I come home some mornings, the neighbours would tell me that he was waiting for me long and them bigger boys giving he weed fuh smoke,” she said.
When the wanted bulletin was issued for ‘Skinny’ following the slaying of former agriculture minister Satyadeow Sawh, his siblings and his security guard, the woman said, her son had long moved out and she had absolutely no communication with him. However, since he has been a prisoner, she said, she tried to ensure that he received meals, which she, her daughter or other relatives would take.
She said she was held twice by police before, for questioning in connection with her son’s involvement in criminal activities. She insisted that she knew nothing of his whereabouts and hoped he would turn himself in.
She said she has resorted to leaving everything in the hands of God, since she was a hard-working mother and if the police were to question people in the community, “if people want talk they would hear that I always working because I bringing up my children without a father and it’s not easy.”
She said she hoped good sense would prevail, as she would make herself available to the police because she had nothing to hide.
“This whole thing is frustrating and it has been stressful for my family and I’m just hoping that everything just come to an end,” she said.
Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles escaped from the lock-ups on Wednesday afternoon following a court appearance at the Sparendaam Magistrate’s court. The police have since acknowledged negligence and admitted that the prisoner had a three-hour lead before a manhunt was launched for him.
Charles made good his escape through a loosened floorboard in the lockups, which had been there for some time but never repaired even though the station sergeant was aware of it. Commissioner of Police (ag) Henry Greene has said that serious action, including interdiction from duty would face those officers found guilty of negligence.
There has been no word on the whereabouts of Charles. The police have said that resources have been dedicated to chasing after him.
Charles has been charged along with Dwight Da Silva, Quincy Evans, Terrence John, Delwayne Carrington and a boy who is now 15 years old, with a number of other murders.
He was charged along with Da Silva with the murder of Barbot Paul, the Kaneville, East Bank Demerara businessman who was shot and killed outside his home on August 6. Charles is also accused of killing Devon Charles of Agricola on June 23; Guilford Henry on June 26, 2005 and 12-year-old Kevin Browne on March 18, 2006. He shares the Browne murder charge with Dego France. Charles is also charged with Da Silva and Evans with being part of a group of men who allegedly murdered five Kaieteur News pressmen – Chetram Persaud, Eion Wegman, Richard Stewart, Mark Maikoo and Shazam Mohamed in August 2006.
It is also alleged that they killed Wordsworth Grey on August 8. The 15-year-old boy, who was 13 years old then, was also charged with that murder. Charles was then charged with the murders of Sawh, Rajpat Sawh, Phulmattie Persaud and Curtis Robinson on April 22 at La Bonne Intention (LBI) East Coast Demerara. David Leander, called ‘Biscuit’, was also charged separately with the LBI slayings.
