On Tuesday, little Aniyah Sariah Jones brought tears to the eyes of the entire congregation at the Irwin Park Sporting Complex in Siparia, when she performed a final dance beside the casket of her father - prison officer Nigel Jones.
Little Sariah recited a verse from the Bible (Philippians 4:13), telling the audience, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." She also did a final dance to the song God Provides in tribute to her father’s life and blew bubbles over him during the final viewing at the venue.
Truth be told, little four-year-old Sariah, whose panicked response many citizens saw in a video of the attack by hitmen against her father, showed a strength of spirit and character which departs even adults at such trying times.
And what courage she showed. Indeed, while she may still be too innocent to understand the full ramification of what has happened to her father, she showed a resilience we sincerely hope will allow her to be a strong survivor in her more formative years ahead without her loving father at her side.
Having said that, we hope that the killing of officer Jones and his colleague Trevor Serrette days before sparks the drive within the Ministry of National Security and the Prison Service to bring the killers to justice. More importantly, the killings must also provide the impetus to clean up the Prison Service and other arms of law enforcement where members from within work against the goals of those institutions.
Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds was front and centre at the funeral service. He gave an impassioned speech in which he confessed, as a father and family man himself, to feeling pained that little Aniyah should be in her current situation, given the systems in place to protect children and adult citizens from those bent on a life of crime.
Yet, this is the rhetoric citizens are accustomed to hearing from Minister Hinds and some of his predecessors. Unlike previous Ministers in National Security, however, Hinds should be better equipped to deal with the current problem, since he had a previous stint within the ministry, during which time the same issues were highlighted.
In this regard, we laud Pastor Wilma Kelly for reminding the congregation that the authorities have been giving lip service to the Prison Service for years.
Pastor Kelly, who has offered ministry to inmates for over 25 years, did not hold back in saying, “Lives have been threatened. Lives have been lost. People lost their marriages. People are scared of doing what’s right…Enough is enough! Too much slaughtering, enough is enough.”
It will take more voices like Pastor Kelly’s to get the Ministry of National Security and, by extension, the Government to get things right within the Prison Service system and law enforcement overall.
For now, however, this newspaper urges those citizens who may have seen something, or know something, to pay tribute to little Aniyah by giving that information to the TTPS so that her father’s killer and those of his colleague can be brought to justice.