Lingering nightmare

• Tivoli residents share tales of ordeal in May 2010

Nadisha Hunter, Staff Reporter

Tears flowed freely in the west Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens recently as residents prepared to mark the first anniversary of an event they will never forget.

Some residents showed open aggression as they blamed the Government and the security forces for the mayhem.

Others declined to talk, while others told The Gleaner that the period was too traumatic to revisit.

But all the residents remember May 24, 2010 when police and soldiers swept into the community which had been barricaded and fortified days earlier.

The barricades, some booby-trapped, had been set up to prevent the arrest of the man residents simply called 'Prezi', a contraction of the title 'President' given to the area leader, Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

The operation resulted in the deaths of an estimated 73 civilians, though some residents claim that at least 100 persons died during the three-day clashes.

One year later, nightmares continue to haunt Barbara Mansel, whose 21-year-old son was killed in the section of Tivoli Gardens known as Java.

Mansel said her son had left his house to care for her mother, who was sick, when he met his demise.

"Every day I cry because I still remember him. It is sad knowing that you lost your loved ones, it sad, it sad. I just don't want to remember it," Mansel tearfully said.

lost her mother

To make matters worse, she also claimed to have lost her mother during the incursion.

"She had cancer and they (security forces) took her out and put her on the cold concrete for the entire day and she developed pneumonia," Mansel said.

Jane McFarlane was away from her home in Tivoli when she received news of the deaths of her two sons

"I spoke to one of them and him say him climb up and him could see the police them a throw people in a fire and me tell him no fi peep make them see him, and me beg him and the other one to keep safe," she explained.

Public Defender Earl Witter, who had investigated claims of corpses being burnt in Tivoli, had said he found no such evidence.

McFarlane said it wasn't long she spoke with her son that she received news that her boys were both killed.

"Me couldn't believe, and when me fi go identify them, me end up a hospital with me two daughters, 'cause them had nervous breakdown.

"So life can't be the same again because me end up with two dead and two half-crazy," McFarlane said.

The disturbing images are still clear as the day it happened for 14-year-old Kemo Jahdean.

"Shot fly through me door, and me bathroom window them shoot up. The soldier them take we out of the house and me tink they were going to execute us. Them put all gun inna me chest and say I am not too young fi dead, and take me uncle and them beat him," the teenager claimed.