Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer 
Students of Calabar High School in a special devotional service in remembrance of Giovanni McKenzie who was fatally killed on Saturday January 7, observe a minute of silence. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
FRIDAY NIGHT, a student from the Red Hills Road-based Calabar High School was killed at Cedar Valley Road, Kingston 6 Just trying to overcome the grieve of a previous killing, once again the boys' school will be plunged into mourning. Just two weeks ago, the school lost another boy to violence.
In early 2005 as gang violence gripped Franklin Town in east Kingston, Ricardo McKenzie and his common-law wife Rosemarie Gordon decided it was time to leave the community where they had lived for most of their lives. "It was not only the war, but the kids were getting bigger and they
wanted to move too," said Mr. McKenzie last week.
SHOT IN BED
Giovanni, the older of the couple's two children, did not live to make that move. On January 7, the 16 year-old Calabar High School student was murdered by a gunman at his parents' home at Upper Elletson Road.
He was killed two days before he returned to school, shot four times as he slept in his bed. Giovanni's lifeless, blood-drenched body was discovered by his father who heard the shots that broke the still of the early morning. "When I found him I couldn't tek a second look at him," said Mr. McKenzie who has since relocated his family, which includes seven-year-old daughter Druezel.
Mr. McKenzie, a taxi driver, says he has flashbacks of his first child. He weeps occasionally when he remembers the boy who rarely ventured out of his home and when he did, it was to attend cadet training and have fellowship meetings with his Christian group.
Superintendent Doric Sinclair, head of the Kingston Eastern Police Division, says his department has made no arrests in Giovanni's death. He told The Sunday Gleaner that no motive has yet been established for his murder.
Mr. McKenzie was born in Vineyard Town but grew up in Franklin Town. It has never been as violent, he says, not even in the 1970s when the area's factions were split by allegiance to the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party.
"Bwoy, a don't know wha' wrong wid the youth dem...is like dem fighting an' don't know what dem fighting 'bout," he said.
Giovanni McKenzie, one Franklin Town youth who preferred to read his Bible than take up the gun, never got the opportunity to fulfill his potential.
The thanksgiving service for his life takes place February 4 at the Pentecostal Gospel Tabernacle at Windward Road.
