The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

FAMILY, friends and colleagues of a Queen’s College elementary teacher who was shot dead in her car last month, lamented the country’s crime crisis that resulted in the “senseless killing”.

At her funeral at Bahamas Harvest Church yesterday, loved ones tearfully remembered Joyelle McIntosh, 40, as “a mother, a friend, a daughter and a bridge builder”.

Tall Pines MP Leslie Miller, who was visibly frustrated, spoke at the funeral yesterday and urged the mourners to vote out representatives who refuse to do what is needed to stem the crime problem.

Mr Miller was given a loud round of applause after again suggesting that “gutless” parliamentarians share the blame for the crime problem.

“Where do we go from here? Why do we continue to let the carnage go on day after day? I’ll tell you why, because in Parliament, we simply don’t have the guts to do what is necessary on behalf of our people. We refuse to implement the laws of our land.

“It is up to us as a society, as a people to force your representatives to work for and on your behalf and those who refuse to do so, when you get to the ballot box, you have a responsibility to yourself, the next generation of Bahamians to do what is right. That is why you sent us there and if (parliamentarians) are not prepared to do what is right, you shouldn’t be there.”

Mr Miller said as a parent who lost a child to murder several years ago, he understood what the mourners were going through.

“It’s time that you all stop sitting down, stop taking it, go to Bay Street and demand a difference. I am tired of repeating things, I am tired of going to funerals every week of my life and see one of us butchered, taken down either by the knife or the gun,” he added.

School officials also spoke out against the country’s steadily decaying crime problem as they paid their final respects to Ms McIntosh, a mother of two who was gunned down after a failed carjacking attempt on November 11.

Andrea Gibson, QC principal, said: “I do not feel that we should ever let ourselves move to a place where untimely death and murder are a given in our life experience.

“It is not okay for a student in the fourth grade to ask his mother if she thinks she will be murdered in a car with him inside. We do not want a Bahamas where people are not allowed to mourn because an even more horrific death has now occurred and the attention moves on.”

She added: “I think we all know that if this killing spree continues in its present course, none of us will escape. The violence, lawlessness and lack of control are affecting us all.”

A woman who attended Bahamas Harvest Church with Ms McIntosh said her death “allows us to think of exactly where we want our country to be and what we are going to do to ensure that other lives were not taken in the senseless manner that hers was.”

“Our country has lost a gem and I think it puts life in perspective for us as to exactly where our country is because now, two young men are without a mother, a mother is without a daughter, and sisters are now without their sister and our country has lost somebody who I think has contributed positively,” the churchgoer said. “And I’m sure she had a lot more to give.”

A man, who said he and his twin brother had known Ms McIntosh for over 20 years, said her death serves as a wake up call to the country’s current state of affairs.

“I think this says a lot to our culture, to our politics, what’s happening in our country as far as crime is concerned,” he said. “We’ve reached a point where we’re fearful. I’m to the point now where I don’t really want my wife to be driving on the road alone. I shouldn’t have to live like that in a lovely place like the Bahamas. But in the case of Joy it’s very sad. She left two kids to mourn, to be raised now without a mother, and that’s sad because I have kids and I wouldn’t want to be snuffed out like that.”

“Joyous Joy,” as a close friend affectionately called her, was one of two people killed on the night of November 11.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Stephen Dean said Ms McIntosh was found dead shortly after 8pm that night when police officers were called to the scene of a reported traffic accident at the stoplight.

On arrival they found a Toyota Corolla crashed into a wall. However, upon examining the vehicle, officers found the body of a woman inside with gunshot wounds in her body.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

ACP Dean said at the time that they had no motive for the murder, but that they were “leaning towards armed robbery.”

Last month, a 17-year-old boy previously enrolled in alternative education programme for disruptive and challenged students was charged with the attempted armed robbery and murder of Ms McIntosh.

It is alleged that he, with two others, attempted to rob the teacher, at gunpoint, of her 2009 silver Toyota Corolla worth $6,000.

It is alleged that during the failed carjacking, the victim was shot multiple times in her head and body. She later crashed into a wall at the intersection of Parkgate and Village Roads.