Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

A Ch­agua­nas moth­er says she has for­giv­en the teenage sus­pect who is ac­cused of vi­o­lent­ly stab­bing her son to death.

Nicole Lash­ley lost her son Chris­t­ian, 15, af­ter he was fa­tal­ly stabbed at the Chris­sy Trace Recre­ation Ground in Ch­agua­nas on Sun­day.

Speak­ing at her Lash­ley Street, Con­nec­tion Dri­ve, En­ter­prise home yes­ter­day, the griev­ing moth­er said noth­ing down now could bring her son back.

Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the par­ents of her son’s al­leged killer, Lash­ley said, “To the par­ents of the child who do it, you know, hon­est­ly, I for­give that child and I don’t want to hold no mal­ice to that child be­cause God said to be mer­ci­ful be­cause at the end of the day, me hold­ing mal­ice against the child, he is just a child too and it can’t have two tragedies.

“He de­serves a chance at life as well and there is no jus­tice that could bring back my son. There is noth­ing that could bring (him) back, ex­cept in the new world (re­fer­ring to the res­ur­rec­tion in Chris­tian­i­ty), noth­ing.”

She added, “A lot of peo­ple are hate­ful say­ing if it was my child (re­fer­ring to peo­ple who would take the route of vengeance), what that solv­ing? It can’t bring him back, he is gone. Young peo­ple just have to re­lax a lil bit, school is to en­joy.”

Lash­ley said she was al­so open to ac­cept­ing an apol­o­gy from the par­ents of her son’s al­leged killer.

“I hope that God re­al­ly has mer­cy on who­ev­er was in­volved, and just think, have mer­cy on them. To the mom and dad of that child, some­times a lil sor­ry would have helped, it won’t take away noth­ing, but at least apol­o­gise. I for­give you son, I for­give you.”

Re­call­ing the events be­fore Chris­t­ian was stabbed, Lash­ley said she was feel­ing un­easy when she dropped him off at Chrissie Trace to get a hair­cut. She said she ad­vised Chris­t­ian to call her be­cause he was threat­ened last Thurs­day by an­oth­er stu­dent who pulled a knife for him.

Lash­ley said Chris­t­ian was tired of be­ing ac­cost­ed.

“The on­ly thing he has is a good per­son­al­i­ty, he makes peo­ple smile, he makes chil­dren laugh. He was like every oth­er teenag­er, he is not per­fect, he has his lil faults but he is not a thief, he is not a mur­der­er, he is none of the above.”

She said when she got a call that her son had been stabbed, she ini­tial­ly thought it was a prank.

Lash­ley said when she ar­rived at the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre, she found out Chris­t­ian’s liv­er had been punc­tured and the doc­tors were strug­gling to save him. She said even fel­low pa­tients were pray­ing for Chris­t­ian. She claimed the am­bu­lance took a long time to come from the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex to Ch­agua­nas be­cause there was no stretch­er avail­able for the am­bu­lance.

“A few min­utes af­ter they told me that he was re­al­ly crit­i­cal, it did not look good. Then I hear the doc­tor say­ing let his mum­my come and give him a kiss. In my heart I said what I was go­ing and give him a kiss for. I went and held his lil hand and I told him mom­my loves you and don’t give up on me, you have to fight for we, we work too hard.”

She said af­ter she spoke with Chris­t­ian, his hand “flick­ered” and he passed out.

Nicole said her hus­band Andy Lash­ley then went with Chris­t­ian in the am­bu­lance to the EWM­SC, where the young man died short­ly af­ter.

She said, “A lot of peo­ple does have a lot of neg­a­tive things to say about par­ents but par­ents does try they best, no­body is per­fect. At the end of the day, my son had a lot of po­ten­tial.”

She said Chris­t­ian want­ed to be an au­to me­chan­ic like his un­cle, who al­so was killed two years ago in Chris­sy Ter­race. She said his un­cle’s death took place when Chris­t­ian was in Form 1 and he be­came with­drawn, hav­ing al­so lost his great-grand­par­ents three months pri­or to the death of his un­cle.

“It was a lot for him to deal with and he re­al­ly tried to cope with it.”

She called on youths to re­ject anger when it aris­es.

“These chil­dren need to stop be­ing so an­gry and just take it down.”

She said fam­i­lies re­live the pain of death dai­ly.

“To oth­er peo­ple, it can be a body, a sta­tis­tic but to fam­i­ly, it’s that per­son dy­ing every sin­gle day. It re­al­ly heart­break­ing to know that peo­ple that he (Chris­t­ian) trust­ed, they prob­a­bly thought it was a joke and it was a game thing, you are on­ly hear­ing one set of dif­fer­ent things, but there is on­ly one truth, it wasn’t a joke, the peo­ple that he trust­ed led him to this.”