(Jamaica Observer) A five-year-old boy and his grandmother were hacked to death by her machete-wielding son, said to be of unsound mind, who went berserk at their family home here late Saturday night.
The mentally challenged man, Leon White, a 28-year-old labourer, was later fatally shot after he reportedly attacked the police with a machete in the former Trelawny parish capital.
The two other deceased have been identified as 56-year-old domestic helper Esmerelda Gordon, also called Coolie and Jennifer, and her grandson, Levon Walker, five, who, like White, was of a Shearer Drive, Martha Brae, address.
According to a distraught family member, Sheila Spence, about 11:00 pm she was alarmed by blood-curdling screams coming from the house where the three lived.
Spence recounted that she rushed towards the house where the cries for mercy grew louder, before suddenly subsiding.
“I thought it was my friend beating her daughter, but when I got closer I realised that the screams were coming from her house. So I ran up and say, ‘Coolie what is the problem?’ But she didn’t answer me. So I said ‘Coolie’ again, and didn’t hear nothing,” Spence bemoaned.
“When I called the mother the last time I heard her ’round (the side of the house) begging her son mercy, don’t kill me, don’t kill me! She was calling for the little boy… ‘Jevaughn, Jevaughn’ I hear both of them crying.”
She then called the Falmouth police, whom she lauded for their quick response.
Upon their arrival, the police managed to forcibly gain entry to the house, even after White bolted the doors. Upon entering the house the police reportedly came under attacked from the machete-wielding White.
The police managed to escape injury, but White was shot during the confrontation.
Spence said the badly mutilated bodies of Gordon and her grandson were found slumped in two different rooms in the house in pools of blood.
“It was so brutal that the police said we could not see it,” the distressed Spence articulated.
She said even though White acted violently in the past, after refusing to take his medication, she did not expect that he would have butchered his mother and nephew.
“Once he gets his meds he is a cool guy,” Spence shared.
A next door neighbour, Gillian Bartley Llewellyn, shared similar sentiments.
“Normally he would attack other people in the community, but I have never seen him attack his own mother. He has atttacked his brother before, but never his mother,”Bartley Llewellyn reflected.
She also blamed the savage attack by the mentally challenged man on him not taking his medication, citing that only Thursday a team from the health department had to leave without giving him his “shots” as he threatened to inflict chop wounds on them.
The community member, who noted that in the past White had hurled stones which smashed her window panes, however, blamed health authorities and the police for failing to ensure that he was treated regularly.
“Whenever I call Falmouth police, they tell me they can’t deal with it because it is for the health department. Whenever I call the health department they tell me vice versa. I am not getting any response from the police, and I am not getting any response from the health department, both of them sending me back to each other,” she fumed.
Meanwhile, Spence described the slain Gordon as a jovial individual.
“Coolie… she was the nicest person you could think of. She wash for people, she is jovial, quiet and nice, and she is always like to beg for her son and always tell you you have to see with him because he is not ‘righted’ and stuff like that,” the disheartened Spence recalled.
