Leonardo Blair, Enterprise ReporterSeventeen-year-old David Walker found the gun in a bag. He stuck it in his waist like a wide-eyed toddler and felt like a 'big' man. An innocent transaction. So say his friends and so says his mother in Torrington Park, south St. Andrew. The gun was in a bag.
But when the police held David with the gun last year, they saw no wide-eyed toddler. They saw a desperate teen, armed and dangerous, suspected of being involved in a triple murder which happened in Admiral Town, Kingston, last November.
They charged him with illegal possession of firearm and locked him up. That's what they reported. David was no saint.
Eugenie Riley is David's mom. She is 43, unemployed and the mother of 14 children who took the 'tie off' six months ago when she had her last child. Her eldest, another son, 26, has been in jail for the last three years on gun charges. A judge granted him bail last June but the offer of $250,000 is too much for her. So he stays in jail. "Mi can't find dem deh money deh," she says. David, her third child who hustled to help her support his siblings, based on police reports, seems to be following his brother's trail too easily. "Me don't know him as no criminal. Ah (down)town him sell. Him is no criminal," says Eugenie with her six- month-old daughter at her breast.
Too easy to follow
But the trail to a life of crime is too easy to follow for teens like David, and that is what worries the police young boys being 'baptised' into a life of crime, explains Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Derrick Knight, crime chief for the Kingston western division. Some are as young as 10 years old.
"They (criminals) use them (young males) to transport guns from one community to another," he says. Those are the boys commonly known as 'gun bags'. Others are involved in rapes, murders and shootings.
"It has been increasing over the last three to four years, especially with the influx of deportees," explains the DSP. "I don't have the statistics but this is the trend in areas like west Kingston, south St. Andrew and Montego Bay in St. James."
But inside some of these communities, it is not hard to see why it is so easy to get caught up. When Enterprise
visited Torrington Park last week, one resident warned that our report must reflect that 'people' live in Torrington Park. Around the corner though, where we me Eugenie, the 'people' were young women, children and a few men gathered around a stall. They too are caught up in the cycle of violence.
There is a ring of desperation in the cries of some of the young women whose faces bring memories of a Japanese geisha. Everyone agrees that David is a good youth except his grandmother, Miss Coolie.
Miss Coolie says she always warned him about his company. Nobody
could hush her. That was David's Achilles heel: company.
bleached face
"The police man tell David say him face too white," explained one of the geisha girls. "'Im grudge the bwoy fi him face. Them claim say ah the bleach-out face-bwoy them a carry out the crime."
David's education ended after the ninth grade two years ago and he has been a full-time hustler ever since, selling clothes downtown for a 'big man' in the community to help his mother.
Despite the hard-knock stories, however, DSP Knight says if a youngster is charged with a crime or misdemeanor in a one-off situation, the system tries to treat him or her differently in a bid to keep him or her on the right track. However, if that delinquent has a history, the treatment will be different and will include consequences such as incarceration.
