Michael Abrahams | Jamaica 2023: a Netflix horror series

Last year was bloody for Jamaica, with over 1,400 murders recorded. All homicides are tragic, but, this year, there were some with unexpected twists that made us gasp in horror and shake our heads in disbelief.

In one of the most heart-wrenching cases, eight-year-old Danielle Rowe was abducted from Braeton Primary and Infant School on June 8. She was subsequently found near the National Stadium, alive but bleeding from a slashed throat, and rushed to the Bustamante Hospital for Children. Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts of medical personnel, Danielle succumbed to her injuries on June 10.

The drama continued at her funeral where chaos erupted when some relatives complained that they were left out of participating in the service and that it was hijacked by politicians and police officials. To add to the discord, her family placed a Jamaican flag stuck with a knife and with red paint splattered on it, to represent bloodshed on the island, on the casket. The police and some officiating ministers objected and the flag was removed.

There was no love lost between Danielle’s mother, Sudene Mason, and her father, Norval Rowe, a police corporal. During an online interview, Rowe claimed that Mason is a con artist who has admitted she wants to kill him and, at the funeral service, the tension between the two was palpable. The negative vibes between them reached a crescendo when Rowe went to the lectern to speak and Mason and her family stormed out of the church.

Subsequently, in August, Kayodi Satchell, a dental assistant, was arrested and charged with Danielle’s murder and abduction. Not only were many Jamaicans shocked to discover that a woman was the alleged killer, but it was also revealed that she was the intimate partner of Danielle’s father.

The sheer brutality of the crime shocked the nation. To take a little girl out of school, slash her throat and throw her from a vehicle, leaving her for dead, was an act that left many grappling to understand.

ANOTHER SAGA

By September 9, Jamaica was seeing the beginning of another saga. On this day, a woman posted on social media that her cousin, Toshyna Patterson, and her infant daughter, Sarayah, were missing. She claimed Toshyna was at home when a vehicle came and picked up herself and her child after she had told her mother that another woman, Leoda Bradshaw, was coming there to see the baby and had arrived at her gate. Interestingly, Member of Parliament Phillip Paulwell was the father of Patterson’s child and also fathered a child with Bradshaw.

Bradshaw promptly issued a statement in which she declared her innocence and refuted the allegations implicating her involvement in the disappearance of the mother and child. She stated that she was in a long-term relationship with Paulwell and that she would continue to “pray for the safe return of Ms Patterson and her baby and ask anyone with information to contact the police”.

Shockingly, on October 6, Bradshaw and three men, one of whom is her cousin, were arrested and charged in relation to the case for kidnapping and conspiracy to murder. The burnt remains of the woman and her child were subsequently found at a location in Wareika Hill. Investigations revealed that Bradshaw allegedly went to Patterson’s home in Kingston 20, picked herself and her baby up, and then delivered them to the hitmen in Stony Hill, who forcibly took them to Wareika Hill in St Andrew, where they were shot in the presence of Bradshaw, and their bodies burnt. On December 27, another male suspect was taken into custody in connection with the double homicide.

In November, it was reported that Melissa Silvera, the wife of former member of parliament for St Mary Western, the People’s National Party’s Joylan Silvera, had passed away in her sleep on November 10. However, the police upgraded their probe after Silvera’s post-mortem revealed she was shot at least three times. Her husband declared his innocence and denied any involvement in her murder. However, it was revealed that he allegedly made adjustments to their bedroom after her death, painting the walls, destroying the bed, and retiling the floor. He retained the services of a King’s Counsel and was interviewed by scene-of-crime investigators. His firearm was also seized for testing.

A law enforcer told a local newspaper that the police who had gone to the house after Melissa Silvera’s death on November 10 were “in trouble”, stating, “It’s impossible for anybody to ignore three bullet wounds. And for something like that, there must be blood splatter. So those police who went there must be under investigation.”

VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS

Violence in our schools among students is an issue that we have become accustomed to and very concerned about. But, on December 21 at the Hopewell High School in Hanover, the victim of violence was, this time, a staff member. Jermaine Roberts, the school’s bursar, was shot and killed by a lone gunman who approached his car and opened fire, killing him on the spot. Witnesses described the assailant as approximately six feet tall and wearing a floral hoodie. It was also reported that Byron Grant, the school’s principal who was on the school compound when the incident occurred, was seriously injured when he ran into broken glass shattered during the shooting, and had been admitted to hospital.

As school authorities grieved and expressed concern about security at the institution, they were hit with another bombshell. In a bizarre plot twist, the principal was taken into custody in connection with the incident, and preliminary inquiries into the killing suggested the shooting may have stemmed from an “interpersonal conflict”.

Hopefully, 2024 will be a better year for us.

Michael Abrahams is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, social commentator and human-rights advocate. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or follow him on X , formerly Twitter, @mikeyabrahams.