Nicole Edwards-De Silva yesterday stroked the white cross picket on a grassy verge adjacent the Diego Martin Highway. Surrounded by colourful zinnias and bright green shrubs, the cross, has become a symbol to the Petit Valley Community of the shooting death of schoolgirl Kimberly Jamila Monderoy. It was at that exact location almost a year ago on October 26, 2008, that 14-year-old Monderoy lost her life to a stray bullet. The teenager—who had just entered Mucurapo Secondary School—was about to cross the Diego Martin Highway with her siblings, Shaquan, six, Jabari, ten, and her seven-year-old cousin Dimitri, when a bullet struck her in the chest, piercing the centre of her heart.

After evading police for almost a year, primary suspect in Monderoy’s killing Joel “Killquick” Simon, 28, was shot by police during a confrontation outside the Villa Maria Hotel at Perseverance Road, Maraval, Sunday night. (See story at right ). He died while undergoing surgery at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope. Simon’s killing six days before Divali, Edwards-De Silva, the child’s mother believes, has exemplified the significance of good over evil. “God do what he had to do and the police did what they had to do. “If Joel had give up himself he would not have to die like that. So he run and that was the consequence he get,” she theorised.

She recalled being awakened by her husband and told that Simon “now get gun down.” “So, what you want me to do,” was Edwards-De Silva’s curt reply to her husband. She then immediately went back to sleep. Saying she felt no sense of retribution upon hearing the news, Edwards-De Silva declared her forgiveness to her daughter’s killer. “What else can I do but to forgive. The church has helped me a lot to cope with the loss of my child and God say to forgive. Nobody could bring her back and I am not going to live my life in hate,” she said. She also empathised that Simon’s four-year-old daughter would grow up never knowing her father.

“It is comforting in a sense that he is dead, but at the same time this is not a happy day for me. There is no joy in it because that is another human life. “To each their own. Joel live that life and had to pay for what he do and he pay for it with his life. Too bad he leave a child behind, that’s the sad part,” she said. Beseeching young men to turn away from a life of crime and violence, Edwards-De Silva said innocent lives were often destroyed in the process. Asked if she had an opportunity to briefly speak to her daughter what would she tell her, Edwards-De Silva smiled and gazed at the cross saying, “I would tell her God don’t sleep.”