‘Danielle is a little angel’

It will forever be etched in Gillian Walker-Morris’ mind that she was the last person to give eight-year-old Danielle Rowe a hug, mere minutes before the Braeton Primary and Infant School student was abducted last Thursday.

The educator told The Gleaner yesterday, during a visit to the school, that it was a tradition for her to hug her students before they depart the room, and, for some strange reason, Danielle made herself the first to be hugged that day.

“I dismissed the class and she was the first one. I normally hug them before they leave, and she was the first one. She didn’t wait for her turn, because I start from the front of the line, and she just stepped out of the line and hugged me and said, ‘See you tomorrow, Miss! Love you!’ and I said, ‘Love you, too my darling’, and she left,” Walker-Morris told The Gleaner inside her classroom, while a choir from the school sang CeCe Winans’ version of Goodness of God, while mourning the premature loss of the girl.

The teacher said the child lives near to the school and would often walk home with her elder sister from Greater Portmore High School and her infant brother who also attends Braeton Primary and Infant School.

In Walker-Morris’ classroom on Monday morning, the last lesson the teacher taught her class was still on the board.

The teacher told The Gleaner that, before the hug, Danielle wrote her notes from that same board with a pencil that was running out of lead. Walker-Morris promised Danielle she would take a pencil to school for her and, while the child would have received it on Friday, fate would have it otherwise.

In addition to describing the deceased child as “polite and mannerable to a fault”, Walker-Morris had much more to say.

“Danielle, oh my God! Danielle is a little angel, believe me, she’s a little lady. She’s very elegant. She’s very meticulous. She takes her own sweet time to do whatever she’s doing, and if it takes her 50 times to go back [to her desk] and get it corrected, she’s going back the 50 times,” Walker-Morris said.

“She’s not disobedient or disrespectful in any way. She plays, but she is not one of those who will play all the time. She’s more concerned with doing her work. Whenever she comes in the morning, usually, she’s late, and whenever she comes, she gets straight to work. Because she’s usually late, it means that she’s always going to be catching up, so whenever everyone else is going out for break or going our for lunch to play, she will stay inside.”

As a female educator, Walker-Morris bats for girls, especially when her classroom does not have them equally distributed with boys, which is now the case in her class for this academic year. She had five girls in the class and 10 boys, and now her girls have been reduced by one pupil.

Danielle was abducted on Thursday while leaving school and found with her throat slashed in Vineyard Town, St Andrew, later that afternoon.

The child reportedly died sometime after 3:00 a.m. at hospital on Saturday.

Walker-Morris said the pupils in the class were scared to attend school yesterday because they fear being abducted, especially the boy who shared the same bench with Danielle in the back left side of the room.

Given that Danielle’s father is a police officer, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) took control of the institution on Monday, by not only registering the name of everyone who entered the school compound but by also hosting a special devotional session with all who wished to attend.

Present for the session was Fayval Williams, minister of education and youth, who pointed out that the loss of this child has rocked the nation in a unique and unfathomable way.

She said, during a visit to the home of the child’s mother, that Danielle’s dog was among the grieving.

“Yesterday, as we visited with Danielle’s mom... And as we spoke and tried to console Danielle’s mom, she pointed us to the cutest little dog that was lying in the yard, and she said, ‘That’s Danielle’s dog. He has just been lying there all day, and she showed us [his food] the sardine can, still full of sardines that was right by the dog, and she said how much the dog loved sardines, but he hadn’t touched it. He was just lying there listless, and if animals can feel grief, how much more can the family, how much more can our students, how much more can Jamaicans feel?” Williams said.

She went on to say that “we will never knew her potential”, before the child’s mother collapsed.

“I want to say to mommy, we grieve with you. This is so unfair that your eight-year-old daughter was snatched away from you, from the school community and from Jamaica as a whole,” she said.

Williams said the person or persons responsible for the death of Danielle should be put away for “a very, very, very long time”.

As a physical response to the abduction and murder of Danielle, Williams committed to having a (closed-circuit television) CCTV installed at the gate of the school, but her offer was topped by Leon Thomas, mayor of Portmore, who committed to retrofitting the entire school with CCTV.

“I know that traditionally, we’ve not had safety cameras, CCTV, in our primary schools. Our primary schools are built in communities by design [where] our children live, most of them, within walking distance. We’ve generally reserved CCTV or safety cameras for high schools, especially those in vulnerable areas, but this morning having seen what has happened here at this very quiet primary and infant school, we have to begin to increase the safety and security at our primary schools,” Williams said.

“We will begin deploying cameras, in particular, at the entrance of schools so at the very least, when there’s a situation, we can at least get some footage, and that is the commitment of the Ministry of Education and Youth this morning, and we will begin with Braeton Primary and Infant School,” she said.

For his part, Thomas said he, along with the member of parliament and the councillor for the division, had a discussion on Monday morning, and they will pay for the cost of the cameras to be installed across the entire school compound.

“We are going to drive that process throughout the municipality. We have started in some of the primary schools already in Portmore. We are now going to look at the ones who don’t have the cameras, and we are going to make the recommendation or send the information to you [Williams], so that we can work together to cover these primary schools that don’t have the cameras,” he said.

Williams also said that, on Sunday, Dr Horace Chang, minister of national security, visited with Danielle’s family and committed to leaving no stone unturned until he and his team find the perpetrator or perpetrators.

She also commended the team from the JCF who arranged the devotion and service at the school on Monday morning in memory of Danielle.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com