“Parents…please talk to your children. Tell them that don’t pay because what goes around, comes around.”
Wiping the tears which streamed down her face as she sat dejected, depressed and demoralized at her home at Pipiol Road, Cantaro, Santa Cruz yesterday, Lauren Andrews appealed to the relevant authorities to stem the flow of illegal weapons into the country as young people were the ones paying the price.
Andrews is the mother of Kevon “Mincy Boy” Andrews, 34, who was among four killed at Damian Bay, North Coast Road, Maracas, on July 2.
The other victims included Keron Pope, Elijah Farrel and CJ Dan.
Andrews was the father of a 22-month-old girl.
Indicating the PH driver/construction worker had accepted a job to take three men and two women to the beach on Saturday, Andrews said she last saw her son around 11 pm on July 1, when came home to shower.
She recalled urging him to lie down and rest with his daughter.
Claiming her son was the kind of person unable to turn down people whenever he was approached to work, she revealed that just as he started showering on Friday night, the phone rang and she heard him reply, “Where alyuh is? I coming down dey just now.”
Donning black pants, a black t-shirt and a camouflage cap - Andrews said he left with an assurance to return by 5 am the next day, so he could watch his daughter as she had to go to work.
She cried, “He never could say no to nobody.”
Adding, “The money not worth it…look at him today,” Andrews clutched her chest several times as she drew several deep breaths, trying to find the words to articulate just how empty she felt.
Asked to say if her son had been involved in any gang activity, the grieving woman denied this.
Instead, she declared, “If my child bad, I will come on the media and say he is a menace but my son was never like that. He was a very cool fella and that is what is hurting me most…why him?”
Andrews said, “It happening all over the country today. Every day a mother crying, somebody bawling.”
Commenting on the worsening crime situation, she said the authorities, “Have to stop the guns from coming into the country. I don’t know how the guns coming in and who getting the guns? Is the little children…and then who inveigling them?
“Is the innocent dying. Regardless of who they want…is the innocent going with them too.”
She continued, “They have to get some way to get them guns off the street because is our children…is little boys doing the crime. Is not elderly people doing the crimes, is little children. They putting guns in their hands and telling them go and do this, go and do that. I don’t know who sending them but that is what is going on right now…the country is getting bad so what can we do?”
Standing by the assertion that her son was innocent, she repeated the call, for government to stop the guns from coming into the country.
“That is the only solution I as a mother, can say. I can’t pinpoint is you but them guns need to come off the street.
“Parents please…tell alyuh children that don’t pay because what goes around, comes around. You will kill my son today and he was an innocent fella. They will come back for alyuh because that (pointing to mouth) don’t keep quiet. Somebody will talk.”