Lorna Anderson-Spence has fond memories of her nieces Alexifa, 11, and Nekfifa, 23, and nephew Joel. But that is all she has — apart from the pain she lives with daily following their brutal murder on August 13.
They, along with their mother Hopelin Dennis, 43, were among the eight people killed in the macabre incident that has come to be referred to as the Tredegar Park massacre.
“We had a lot of fun because most of them (Dennis’ children) would come to my mother’s yard and we would play,” said Anderson-Spence whose brother fathered all three children.
She especially loved little Alexifa.
“Her nickname was ‘Angel’,” says Anderson-Spence.
This name, along with her other alias ‘pastor’, was given to her because of her strong commitment to her Christian faith. For those who knew her, she had managed to live up to those names, always seeming to be above reproach.
“Mi nuh stop cry,” says a distraught Anderson-Spence.
“She (Alexifa) was so loving; her name says it all,” adds the woman as she shakes her head, still unable to come to grips with the gruesome murder of her relatives.
As for her sister-in-law, Anderson-Spence said she was an excellent mother who had seven of her eight children with her (Anderson-Spence’s) brother. She said that while Dennis was a lady of few words, she was dedicated to her children and seven grandchildren.
Ruth Edwards, who knew Dennis since she moved to the area 20 years ago, attests to the fact that her life was centred around her children.
“All of her children, she breastfeed them until about two and a half years old. That’s the type of person Dennis was,” notes Edwards. “She sent them to school. She never go to bed and they are outside. She always make sure that when she is in, they are in with her.”
In fact, the family had retired to bed when the marauding gunmen struck.
Today, Dennis’ five remaining children are without a mother; Nekfifa’s three offsprings have been robbed of both a mother and a grandmother. The fact that both women were responsible mothers, according to family members, has made their tragic deaths even harder to bear.
Meanwhile, the two women’s death brings to 92 the number of women murdered in Jamaica since the start of the year, according to police statistics. It is a reminder that women are increasingly the victims of crime.
“They (women) are very vulnerable because they are the ones who are least protected. They are at home with the children so when they (gunmen) go to get the family, it’s the women and children they are going to get,” notes gender specialist Glenda Simms.
She adds that women need to be cognisant of this.
“There was never a time when women were feared because men hate other men and so when they can’t get at the men, they get at their women. So women become a pawn in a dangerous game. We have always been pawns. Let us forget this thing about us sitting up on a pedestal or that we are princesses,” she says.
Like Simms, Danielle Toppin, herself a gender specialist, believes that women have become increasingly vulnerable to criminal elements in the last several years.
“I think the vulnerability in their role as mothers and in their role as partners is that they get used and brought into something. If you really want to get at the man, you kill his wife, or you kill his woman, or you kill his babymother or you kill his mother,” she tells AW.
Toppin, who has done work with inner-city residents said her interaction with men in these areas would suggest that killing a woman or a child is the ultimate form of revenge for gunmen.
“I remember doing sessions with some men in one of the inner-city communities, and the statement that they made is that when women die in war, war changes,” she said.
“So you can have wars going on between men and there are certain rules. But when a woman is killed, the nature of the war changes because in a way, there is a boundary that has been crossed,” Toppin added.
There has been an ongoing feud in Tredegar Park for sometime now, resulting in the loss of several lives and the destruction of property. Police believe that a longstanding dispute between the One Order and the Klansman gangs could be responsible.
They are continuing their investigations into the most recent killings for which at least two suspects have been taken into custody.
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