Kerry-Ann Wilson would have celebrated her daughter’s seventh birthday yesterday. Instead, her partially clothed decomposing body was found wrapped in tarpaulin, stuck under the rail of the walkway at Crystal Towers Apartments on Old Hope Road in St Andrew.
The police reported that the body was found minutes after nine yesterday morning. It is alleged that she was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend and father of her child who lives in the complex, a stone’s throw from the office of the commissioner of police.
The suspect is reported to be on the run.
Grief and hurt resonated at the scene yesterday afternoon when the Jamaica Observer visited, as friends and relatives of the slain woman converged outside the usually quiet gated community expressing disbelief.
“Jesus Christ, why we? Weh Shauna (the victim’s alias) do?” one woman, who identified herself as Wilson’s aunt, openly shouted as she clenched the closed gate looking on at the body.
Wilson’s sister, who identified herself as Chrissy, admitted that there was an ongoing tiff between her sister and the suspect but was shell-shocked at what it had come to.
“Dem have a relationship but it wasn’t working because of cussing an’ fighting. Every time him tell her fi ‘come out, come out’. Even when mi mother was alive him tell her fi ‘come out, come out’; pack up har clothes dem bring ova mi mother yard,” she said of the troubled relationship.
“About two weeks ago him call mi phone an’ say ‘Chrissy, which part a Portmore yu live?’ And… him say him a go carry her clothes dem come, an mi say, ‘No, you cyan do that, a yuh babymother, yu need fi sit wid har an’ talk out di situation and whatever.’ So him neva really come wid it,” she continued.
She noted that on that night he again put out the woman’s belongings, which she picked up and moved in with another man.
She said that since her sister left, the suspect would call her (Chrissy) continuously, threatening to kill himself. She said, out of sympathy for him, she encouraged her sister to speak with him to prevent him from committing suicide.
“Mi sister say she cyan bother wid it no more; but mi call har an’ mi say, ‘Jus’ talk to him an reason wid him dat him nuh hurt himself,’ But mi neva know say him have it a say him a go kill my sister,” she said.
“Him nah tell mi say him a go kill my sister enuh, him a tell mi say him a go kill fi him self alone. A since mi come pan di scene now mi find out say him a send threat say him a go kill my sister,” Chrissy added.
Stating she believed jealousy was the reason for the crime, Chrissy revealed that her sister was also pregnant for another man.
“Di life weh dem live weh him do fi him ting, she do fi har ting, an’ it end up dat she get pregnant – but she wasn’t gonna tell him as yet,” she stated.
“It’s sad, it’s really really sad. How mi come see mi sister wrap up inna tarpaulin an carpet, she naked, her pants draw down… mi see like mi nuh know if a cut har belly cut out or di throat cut or something like dat, mi not even sure,” Chrissy, 33, said as she twiddled her thumbs.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, because she is my backbone, I call her for everything, an’ mi jus feel alone right now. Mi have family an’ so, but it’s just hurt,” she said in tears.
She revealed that her sister would have turned 32 next Saturday and was planning a fish fry to mark her birthday.
Wilson’s 16-year-old son, an aspiring fashion designer, recounted that he was to make his mother’s outfit for her birthday celebration.
“I was to make something for her for her birthday party because mi do sewing, an so she tell mi say she want mi mek her a outfit fi har party,” the distraught son told the Sunday Observer before he broke down in tears.
“Mi cyan believe mi mother gone an she nuh get fi see mi turn di big fashion designer weh mi tell her mi want to be, an’ di big entrepreneur mi tell her mi want fi be every day. Mi grandmother not here fi see it, an’ mi mother nah go deh here fi see it, an’ now mi affi go jus prove it to mi aunty an’ di rest a mi family dem,” the high school student said.
“She was my best friend. Everything mi mother do, she tell mi, she nuh hide nothing from mi,” he said between sobs. “Everything she tell mi. If she get a money, mi know; if she a go deh so, mi know everything. When she a come back, mi know, mi know everything bout my mother. Mi was like her journal, ’cause everything she tell mi.”
The teenager, though, expressed fear for his life, as he, too, lived in the apartment with his mother.
“I am scared now, ’cause mi nuh know what can happen… because mi nuh know if him a go want come inna night, sneak in an try hurt mi,” he told the Sunday Observer, adding that this tragedy came as he was preparing to sit an exam on Wednesday as part of his preparation for next year’s Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate exams.
Chrissy believes that her sister was dead from last Thursday.
“I have some old-time pictures of mi kids an’ mi sen her dem. Mi don’t get no reply. She only text mi lsquo;sup’ on WhatsApp, an’ dat’s not like my sister fi just say ‘sup’ like dat, she would normally say ‘sis wah gwaan’ or she would send a voice note or so. An’ den mi sen’ her one a di little message dem weh dem sen’ pan WhatsApp,like di God message dem. She nuh reply none at all.
“Mi ask her if she alright, she jus say ‘yeh’, an’ that’s not like my sister to just say ‘yeh’ like dat. It was Thursday to Friday. So it come like him do weh him fi do already wid her an’ den him have her phone an’ a converse wid mi like a she, but is not she,” Chrissy said.
She also said she found her sister’s ex-boyfriend’s interaction on Facebook odd.
“On Facebook now, mi neva ever yet see him comment pan one a mi picture dem pan Facebook an’ him deh pan Facebook a like up every picture, him like up every picture. Mi post a photo an’ him say ‘Yuh look just like yuh sista.’ That was Thursday night some minutes to nine.”
Grief soon became shock and anger when a woman appeared on the scene claiming she was the wife of the suspect. Raising many eyebrows, the woman was soon encircled by Wilson’s relatives, some hurling disparaging comments, others seeking answers to the puzzling situation.
“Unnu nuh si is a prank dat, nutten nuh go suh. A legacy she come fi collect,” one relative stated as she rolled her eyes at the woman.
“Weh you mean you a him wife?” another person questioned.
When approached by the media, the woman, who was cautioned by a police officer not to give her name, said she has been married to the suspect since 2002, but the two had separated in 2011.
“Wi break up because he was going around wid a lot of women. Woman a call mi phone, woman a disrespect mi, calling mi phone late hours a night a disrespect mi, all dem something deh,” she said.
“When mi talk to [him] bout it [him] get ignorant, waan lick mi dung, yuh undastan? So I decide say, listen, if it cyan be resolved, or we cyan go to a counsellor, jus’ leave it alone, an’ dat’s where I walk away,” she added. “We married, an’ it was on an off, on an off, on and off. When we were there the relationship was quite alright until we got married; that’s where things went sour between the both of us,” the woman said.
When asked how she ended up on the scene, the woman told the Sunday Observer: “I was in a taxi, and I heard the taxi man say, ‘one woman dead inna one gully ova deh so’, but when mi look mi see seh a Crystal Towers, 96b Old Hope Road, an dis is where I used to deh wid him.”
She said that she asked the driver to stop, got out and when she approached the crowd she heard people calling her husband’s name. She said she asked them if he was dead, but they replied that he had killed his child’s mother. The news, she said, shocked her.
But the woman’s presence infuriated Wilson’s aunt.
“She a mek mi get ignorant fi har, ennuh, a dat she a do, ennuh. She a come talk bout wife dis an wife dat,” the aunt fumed.
At this point, a group of women who identified themselves as police officers took the wife across the road to the Police Commissioner’s Office, apparently out of concern for her safety.
