Jensen La Vende

The stub­born­ness of a La Hor­quet­ta teen, cou­pled with neg­a­tive in­flu­ence by el­ders, are the two ma­jor rea­sons Kay­o­de Ed­wards was killed on Wednes­day night dur­ing a botched rob­bery.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 10.20 pm Wednes­day three men stormed a pri­vate res­i­dence with a room used for gam­bling and equipped with a roulette ta­ble and at­tempt­ed to rob those gath­ered.

As the men en­tered the home, lo­cat­ed at Phase Five, La Hor­quet­ta, an off du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer, at­tached to the Mar­aval Po­lice Sta­tion, opened fire on the ban­dits.

Ed­wards, 19, of Phase Sev­en La Hor­quet­ta, was shot in the head and died at the scene. The oth­er two rob­bers ran, leav­ing their wound­ed ac­com­plice be­hind.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, Ed­wards' fa­ther, Samuel, said his son was a jovial, unas­sum­ing young man who was led astray by old­er men in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said: "I used to talk to him every­day, even up to yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) morn­ing me and him spoke. The re­al­i­ty haven't reached home yet. I had a very long dis­cus­sion with him in the morn­ing.

"That was a con­tin­u­ous thing. Some­times I think one of the walls that the youths put up is that they think they could take care of them­selves and they 'not in that (crim­i­nal­i­ty).'

"It have old­er men in the area who are in­volved in crim­i­nal be­hav­iour and the youths grav­i­tate to­wards that. I think the prob­lem is and it is a bit scary be­cause it not go­ing away. It will keep hap­pen­ing over and over."

Ed­wards said one of the prob­lems be­ing faced was that there were pock­ets of neg­a­tive el­e­ments that al­ways come up and they have a strong at­trac­tion to the unas­sum­ing youths and the lit­tle delin­quent youths like his son.

He said the killing of his son came as a sur­prise to the fam­i­ly as they nev­er knew he was in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty but knew he as­so­ci­at­ed with those who were. He said he did all he could to keep his son, the last of six chil­dren, out of trou­ble.

"I re­al­ly don't know... I think I used every­thing in my ca­pac­i­ty and as a per­son who deals with peo­ple. This is a very dif­fi­cult one in terms of keep­ing him to main­tain that di­rec­tion.

"As my fa­ther taught me bad as­so­ci­a­tion spoils use­ful habits and birds of a feath­er flock to­geth­er. These youths al­ways seem to un­der­stand and know.

"Some­thing def­i­nite­ly hap­pen... he was there. My is­sue is you were there and he did not use to be there. The is­sue is who did the shoot­ing? Ed­wards asked.

Ed­wards' sen­ti­ments were echoed by his wife, Denise King­cape, the teen's step­moth­er. She said she would re­mem­ber her step­son the way he was and not the way she saw him the night he was killed.

She added: "Peo­ple have many sides but I will re­mem­ber the side he showed me, very re­spectable, a child I could call on at any time... as his dad­dy said choic­es and com­pa­ny.

"I will like to tell the oth­ers who were left be­hind, try to put God in your lives and to the old­er ones stop in­flu­enc­ing the younger ones be­cause as they say chil­dren learn what they see. Kay­o­de was a child, at 19, he was a child."