At the time of his death nearly three weeks ago, Jumal Park, 16, was an unlikely breadwinner for his family, which he had been supporting with his earnings from his work at a city wash bay.
According to his mother, security guard Shondell Wright, and a sister, Aneisa, Park, the sixth of seven siblings, was eager to assist his family, which had seen him make an early exit from the school system.
A former student of Charlestown Secondary, Park, of 162 Non Pareil Street, Albouystown, Georgetown, dropped out of school when he was in Fourth Form and began working at a bakery, where he washed and greased baking pans. His sister said this work ran so late that Park was happy when he eventually got a job at the wash bay, which meant earlier hours.
However, it was not to last as an altercation with three older boys at his workplace resulted in him being fatally stabbed. The Guyana Police Force reported that Park was at work at the Wanita Wash Bay, located at Front Road, West Ruimveldt, where he was attacked by the teens, who are ages 17, 18, and 19. The confrontation reportedly arose after Park sought to stand up for a co-worker, said to be 15.
Park and most of his other siblings were raised by Wright and his eldest sister, Aneisa. The latter said that after she completed secondary education, she had thrown herself into helping to raise Park and their other siblings while their mother worked to provide for them. However, she began suffering from epilepsy, which rendered her unable to take care of her siblings. Aneisa said another brother who had dropped out of school while in Third Form was assisting the family financially but eventually left, having a family of his own to take care of. Added to that, two other sisters began child-bearing while still teenagers, and one of them also dropped out of school. By this time Park was old enough and was keen to provide for the family.
Wright, who has been both the mother and father to her seven children, has been devastated by Park’s murder, which has shaken her resolve to make a life for her children on her own. “I said, ‘Father, you give me health and strength so that I could stand up as a mother and a father to mind me children’ and God give me the strength. But now I’m lost. I don’t have the strength to go back to work. But I have to go because where will I find the rent from? Who will mind me? I’m 44 years and I got a 14-year-old son and he got to go to school. He can’t drop out of school. It’s hard, it’s hard. My son dead. I’m grieving inside every day,” the woman lamented.
Although he was trying to help shoulder the burdens of supporting the family, Park was planning on leaving their home to rent his own place. Wright said she told him, he was too young to live on his own but Park believed that if he was old enough to work, he was old enough to live on his own. “I could hardly stay in this house and would go by my other son. Every time I stay in this house, all the memories of he just coming back,” she lamented.
“At the last when I talk to he, I beg he for $200, that is what hurting me. I’m begging God to give me the strength as a mother. He used to say, ‘Mommy you punishing and I need to come out of the house to help you come out of poverty. He promised me all to buy a motorbike to carry me to work because every day I does got to walk to work,” she recounted.
Wright, a security guard, said that she works for a monthly salary of $53,000 and change with which she pays $20,000 in rent and the others bills and expenses for herself, a younger son, a daughter and a grandchild.
According to his sister, on the day he was killed Park had $60,000 and a gold earring on his person but none of it was found after the fatal attack. The money was to have been used for a down payment for a second-hand motorcycle.
While two of the three suspects have been charged with Park’s murder, the third, a juvenile, is still on the run. Park’s family claims to often see him roaming the streets.
