By Claude Mills, Staff ReporterCHRISTINE RICHARDS is a woman who has become a mere spectator in her own life - watching helplessly as the very fabric of her life threatens to unravel before her eyes.
The 32-year-old mother is still trying to come to grips with the execution-style killing of Bertram Byfield, her lover and father of her three children, and her only daughter, Toni-Ann, in England on Sunday.
Police suspect that the father and daughter were executed by a 'Yardie hitman' at a house in Harlesden, North London. Toni-Ann was reportedly shot in the
back as she tried to run away becoming what the British press dubbed 'the youngest victim of Yardie gang violence in London'.
When The Gleaner arrived at her home in Alamander Way in Tower Hill, St. Andrew, Ms. Richards was surrounded by friends who were busy braiding her hair, in preparation for a meeting with Stewart Lester, second secretary at the British High Commission, yesterday.
"Right now, I am just trying to be strong. My sons have taken it really badly. My eldest, Jermaine, put a knife to his throat when he heard the news and I had to grab the knife from him. I have not been able to cry... I cannot cry in front of them, I don't know what they will do, I have to be strong for them," the 32-year-old mother said.
Unemployed and inconsolable in her grief, Ms. Richards is now left to struggle with her two sons, Jermaine, 13, and Keron, 10, both sons of the deceased Bertram Byfield, and to mourn the passing of her seven-year-old daughter.
THE LAST TIME
"The last time I saw Toni-Ann was in 1999. Her father had planned to take her out here in Jamaica in December this year, he even came out to Jamaica in June... the last time I spoke to her was last week, and she said to me 'Mommy, I want to look for you, I want to see you and my brothers' ...I didn't know it would the last time I would see my baby," she said.
Toni-Ann reportedly went to England in 1999 in the care of Ms. Richards' friend, Marcia Ashley. However, Toni-Ann's father, a British national who was convicted and ordered to serve nine years for supplying crack cocaine, was released from jail in October 2001. He immediately took Toni-Ann into his care, but subsequent physical abuse of the young girl by - according to Ms. Richards - "Byfield's other daughter who had been taking care of her", landed Toni-Ann in the care of the social services.
"I blame the social services, she just got out from the social services over there in August and went over to his house. Didn't they suspect that something was not right over there? It's not even one month yet since she left their care, and now, she's dead. Why didn't they do their job? If she were there or if she were home in Jamaica, she'd be alive today," she said.
Birmingham City Council moved Toni-Ann Byfield from foster parents in the Midlands to live in north London just weeks before she was murdered at her father's home.
BLAME MYSELF
"I really blame myself for her death, I should have gone to England, found some way to go and get by baby from him, and now she gone," she said, with a grim voice, her voice cracking a little.
"I told him to send her home but he refused to... I know he loved her, he would rather that she stayed with him and die there, than come home to me."
Ms. Richards doesn't have a Jamaican passport but is now seeking to secure her travel documents so that she can go to England to attend the funeral of her daughter, Toni-Ann and her lover of 15 years.
"I have been speaking to the overseas immigration and police and they have promised to get me a visa but what about my two sons? Who will I leave them with? Yardies killed my daughter and her father, suppose they want to kill my sons as well? I have no one to leave them with, all my family is in Philadelphia."
Checks with the British High Commission did not reveal much about the status of her travel documents.
