The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

FAMILY members of women killed came together to remember their loved ones as the Zonta Club launched its 16 days of activism.

At the entrance to Nassau Village, pictures of the area’s recently slain women were displayed. The victims were killed between 2019-2020.

House Speaker and area MP Halson Moultrie during the event noted the pledge he made to fight with the club and many other organisations to tackle the issue of domestic violence.

He said: “I pledged last year when three young ladies were murdered in Nassau Village in December. I pledged to be active as the Speaker to bring about gender equality and to fight along with Zonta and the Women’s Crisis Centre, and FOAM and other NGOs as we tackle this issue of physical violence against women and children and so today was the launch of that programme.

“We’re gonna tie 40 orange bows throughout Nassau Village as a symbol of hope that we will eradicate this disease of violence against women and children out of Nassau Village,” he said.

Cleo Lockhart was one of the women murdered last December. The mother of six was fatally shot and her body was found in the bush.

Her mother, Mary Jane Major, said no one has been charged for the murder.

“There hasn’t been any closure so it really has a burden on the family because we really need a closure with this crime. You know we want to know why, who and it really has to be a closure for us,” she said.

“Right now to stop these crimes I feel like the law has to be changed because even though they caught these criminals they go in and they come right back out. Then they commit another crime.”

Ms Major said she’ll never forget when she got the call from one of her daughter’s telling her that her daughter had been murdered.

“I just was out of it. I didn’t even get here in time to witness the body or anything because I was really, really out of it. But finally I got in Nassau Village ….to her husband’s house and everything was so really painful. It wasn’t easy at all.”

A month before Mrs Lockhart’s death, 17-year-old Kenrika Martin was found partially nude on a beach at Stokes Cabana last November.

Her mother Marzie Lightbourne admitted the family hasn’t been coping very well because she was the family’s heart.

“Since she is gone, it feels like they have stripped us of our whole life and we have not been the same since she has left,” Ms Lightbourne said.

In fact, they haven’t got any closure yet because the courts have not been operating fully due to COVID-19. The person accused was supposed to come to court on March 6th.

The mother explained: “They had him on a flatscreen TV and he pleaded not guilty and from then to now we haven’t heard from anyone since then on the matter of his case or anything like that.”

Recalling the day she found out about her 17-year-old’s death, she remembered her daughter went out to carry a job document. The parents had a gut feeling something was wrong.

“She walked right out of the house and her daddy replied to her where she was going that late because we were already used to her walking out around the village with children around that time.”

“After that, it was like about 10.00, her daddy sat up inside the bed and he jump up and he replied to me ‘Oh, lord our life will never be the same no more’. So reply to him what he means our life will never be the same no more?”

“After I went (to) sleep I just got this feeling come over me and all of a sudden my body just got numb and I just say ‘Lord somebody fooling with my daughter.’

‘Wherever my daughter I…’ I say ‘ let somebody see where she could get some help or just hear her.”

Despite the feelings she was getting, the mother was unaware of what was going on. She woke up the next day and thought her daughter would come home.

A strange coincidence happened when she came across a blue dress that Ms Martin had bought for her mother about two days before.

“A spirit came over me to put on the dress… I didn’t know that she died in the same colour dress. A spirit just had me put on the same colour dress that morning,” she recounted.

Yesterday marked 14 months since the death of 58-year-old Gloria Rolle. She was found killed with Tenneson Vaught Leslie, 39, in an apartment on Gladstone Road.

According to her daughter Naomi Adderley, the killer has not been found. Her daughter told how difficult it is to lose her mother so tragically.

“The feeling of her loss is never gonna go because she impacted us,” she told The Tribune. “You know growing up from your mother from one to your current adult age. Someone that never was missing out of your life. To have someone actually take her away in the clip of a hand. To know that you can’t go to her and have a conversation and do whatever you normally do with her it’s really (heartbreaking).”