Rhon­dor Dowlat

Crit­i­cal times are hard to deal with in this world now, giv­en the fact that vi­o­lence has tak­en over es­pe­cial­ly the kind of vi­o­lence which claimed the life of 14-year-old Nao­mi Nel­son.

This was the stark re­al­i­ty check made by Pas­tor Vic­tor Hare­wood dur­ing Nel­son’s fu­ner­al ser­vice— one of the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing vic­tims— that took place yes­ter­day at the L’Anse Mi­tan Recre­ation Ground at Seav­iew Gar­dens in Care­nage.

Hare­wood, how­ev­er, as­sured the scores of mourn­ers to take com­fort in the Bible and in Je­ho­vah.

He said Nel­son stud­ied the Bible with the Je­ho­vah Wit­ness “tak­ing in knowl­edge of some­thing spe­cial.”

“She was a pleas­ant child. A vi­brant per­son who played steel­pan with Star­dust Steel Or­ches­tra and who loved danc­ing. She was in­volved in pos­i­tive things, “ Hare­wood said.

Nel­son was killed by a sin­gle bul­let to the head dur­ing a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing on May 3 at Big Yard in Care­nage.

Nel­son, who at­tend­ed the Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary School and mem­ber of the Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club, was killed along with Keron Eve, 30 and Ka­reem Roberts, 27.

Two oth­ers were wound­ed and iden­ti­fied as Chris­t­ian Eve, 31 and Ronal­do Syd­ney, 21, who is said to be the god­son of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Syd­ney has a bul­let lodged in the ab­domen that is said to be mov­ing clos­er to the spine.

An au­top­sy con­duct­ed last Tues­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre said Nel­son was shot to the back of the head with the bul­let ex­it­ing to the front.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that Nel­son was killed by a bul­let from an il­le­gal firearm and not from a po­lice gun.

In a me­dia brief­ing last week, Grif­fith showed a graph­ic that de­pict­ed an im­age show­ing the po­si­tion of of­fi­cers and al­leged gang mem­bers at the shoot­ing scene that night.

Grif­fith ex­plained that the po­lice of­fi­cer would have en­tered in­to the area from the West­ern Main Road and would have head­ed north in their un­marked ve­hi­cle when they were al­leged­ly fired at by the al­leged gang mem­bers on the block (fac­ing in a souther­ly di­rec­tion).

He fur­ther said from the im­age Nel­son was be­hind the po­lice ve­hi­cle sug­gest­ing that she would have been to the front of the al­leged gang mem­bers who were shoot­ing at the po­lice.

Nel­son’s rel­a­tives strong­ly be­lieve that she was shot from the bul­let of a po­lice of­fi­cer’s gun, how­ev­er, bal­lis­tic test­ing, which is now pend­ing, will de­ter­mine from whose bul­let the gun was fired from.

There was a heavy po­lice pres­ence at the fu­ner­al.

Mem­bers of sev­er­al po­lice youth clubs through­out the coun­try were al­so in at­ten­dance to pay their last re­spects.

Al­so in at­ten­dance was chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Su­san Hong.

Nel­son was laid to rest at the Care­nage Pub­lic Ceme­tery.