The fatal use of a gun irresponsibly located within easy reach of teenagers is a standout event, even in this age of wanton disregard for human life. It is yet to be reported whether or not the gun was legally held.
Nearly as bad as the wasteful death of the 16-year old boy is the fact that the surviving teenager/s said to be involved in the shooting tragedy, will experience a tortured future for their cousin’s demise, and this is even if, as reported, it was not a willful act on the part of anyone.
As reported in the Sunday Guardian, 16-year-old Jeremiah Outram, of Arima, was spending time with his grandmother in Cunaripo when he was accidentally shot and killed while playing with his cousins. The report is that he and his relatives were filming themselves while playing with a gun, which they found in a nearby clothes basket.
Assuming that the teenagers were not the ones who had permanent responsibility for the weapon being where it was supposed to be taken from, those who placed the gun in such an easily accessible place must surely share the major responsibility for the teenager's death.
Questions abound about the incident. Where and how did this firearm get to be where it was allegedly found? Who placed it there? Was it a legal or illegally held firearm? How come it was not previously detected if it were in such a not-too-well-hidden part of the home?
From the reported reaction of the grandmother, in whose home the gun was located, she, notwithstanding not being the kind of person likely to be party to such reckless endangerment, will nevertheless have to answer questions as to how the gun got there and by whose hand.
We leave, for the moment, the answers to those questions to the investigation of the police service under the watchful eye of Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher.
Understandably, in her more than distressed state and her need to lay blame, the boy’s grandmother places the responsibility on social media.
“I does call it madness because it does send them children mad,” says grandmother Patricia Pierre in her claim “that is social media which have my grandson dead today.”
The reality is that there is no holding back the advance of technology and its provision of opportunity to trigger the young minds who engage with it, often without the slightest concern for possible negative effects. However, and this comment is not designed to make anyone feel unnecessarily guilty for the teen's death, but rather to say that as onerous a task as it surely is in today’s environment of technological wizardry, there is an even greater demand for the monitoring of young people and their interaction with the technology.
That responsibility becomes doubly difficult when there are adults who have little understanding of how the technology works and how children and young people in their care can be monitored in their use of technology.
The implementation of programmes to assist parents and grandparents to understand and monitor the use of technology is surely needed.
