By Matthew Falloon, Staff Reporter
Classmates of Shanique Reynolds, the pregnant 15-year-old who was murdered along with her infant twin sisters, Shavel and Shavanice Malcolm, vent their grief at the funeral service yesterday. - Michael Sloley /Freelance Photographer
THE STORY of 39-year-old Sharon Thomas is one that may never be told in history books, but is one that defines a society on the brink and wrenches the heart - the tale of a Jamaican inner-city mother whose family was torn apart by gunmen.
Two months after her twin daughters Shavel and Shavanice Malcolm - were born, their father was gunned down.
Shortly after her second eldest daughter, Shanique Reynolds, had started secondary education at Norman Manley High, she became pregnant, aged only 14. Three years later, in the early hours of October 18, gunmen descended on their home in Wilton Gardens (Rema) and murdered all three daughters and snuffed the life of her unborn grandchild.
Yesterday, hundreds joined in her grief as Mrs. Thomas said goodbye to her daughters. The bodies of the three-year-old twins and 15-year-old Shanique, with her baby beside her, lay in elaborate white coffins before the congregation at Fellowship Tabernacle, Half-Way Tree, St. Andrew, as friends and relatives sang, prayed and wept in memory of wasted lives.
The Rev. Al Miller, Government Ministers Dr. Omar Davies and Portia Simpson Miller sat beside the grieving mother and her brother, Michael Thomas, at the emotional service.
In the heart of grief, however, there were times for smiles as Patrice Jackson, cousin of the deceased, recalled a Shanique who was a "straight A" student, "loved by everyone" with a love for music... and food. Her young sisters, also known as "Silk" and "Satin", were mischief-makers, according to Mrs. Jackson, forever fighting over breakfast and tussling for bed-clothes, bright and energetic, "sweet, so innocent, so young".
"They were undone by irate and vicious men," she said. "May their innocent souls rest in peace."
Speaking after Mrs. Jackson's eulogy, Attorney Bert Samuels compared the murders and the rising attacks on children to the biblical tale of Herod, who ordered the death of all male babies under two years, but praised Mrs. Thomas for her strength and wisdom in asking that no reprisals should add to the river of blood.
It was a sentiment echoed by the Minister of Finance.
"There is a heroine in the midst of us," Dr. Davies said in a brief address, nodding to Mrs. Thomas. "How can you imagine the trauma to have lost, at one go, three of your offspring?"
He pleaded for a concerted effort from all sectors to end the violence. "Let us look to the future," he said. "We will have to seek to remove that cancer from society."
Addressing the congregation and delivering the sermon, Rev. Miller did his best to comfort the grieving. "When children die, it's all right with God, not with their dying, but that we know where their spirit goes," he said.
