Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The moth­er of mur­dered teen foot­baller Zwade Al­leyne yes­ter­day called on politi­cians to set aside their dif­fer­ences and ad­dress gun vi­o­lence in the coun­try.

Keisha Bethelmy spoke dur­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice for her son which was held on the foot­ball pitch at Con­stan­tine Park, Ma­coya.

“I’m not go­ing (in­to) pol­i­tics, no how. But every­body, all the min­is­ters and all the gov­ern­ment need to work to­geth­er for them (gun­men) to put down the guns. The guns, the guns! We need to change the word gun in­to love. That’s why we need love. Where is the love? There’s no love. We need love.”

Al­leyne, 17, a Fifth Form stu­dent of Ari­ma North Sec­ondary was shot once in the head on May 10 while he and oth­ers were lim­ing. Po­lice re­port­ed that around 10.45 pm, Al­leyne was at Build­ing 12 in the stair­way when he no­ticed gun­men ap­proach­ing, who then opened fire. Al­leyne ran and then col­lapsed.

Af­ter the gun­men left, he was tak­en to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, where the mid­field­er died five days lat­er.

Bethelmy called on par­ents to keep their chil­dren away from a life of crime and re­mind­ed those gath­ered not to seek vengeance.

“I want to say, that re­venge be­longs to God. And I want to tell each and every one of you all young chil­dren, leave it in God’s hands. Let God do his own judge­ment. And I want to say to the young boys who just come in the build­ing ... shoot­ing up, wild, wild, wild, Lord have mer­cy on all of you.”

She plead­ed for more love, say­ing, “I will plead for the young peo­ple and the young men to put down the guns. Please put down the guns. Be­cause it’s a set of sense­less killings for no rea­son at all. And we need to know what is love. We need to change guns in­to love and learn to love one an­oth­er. We need it in this coun­try.”

As mourn­ers gath­ered at the pavil­ion for Al­leyne’s fu­ner­al, a con­trast­ing scene un­fold­ed just be­hind the venue, where four pri­ma­ry schools—Tu­na­puna Boys’ RC, Bam­boo Set­tle­ment Gov­ern­ment, St Mary’s An­gli­can, and Mara­cas RC—com­pet­ed in si­mul­ta­ne­ous crick­et match­es, fill­ing the air with the sounds of joy amid the sor­row.

Dur­ing the eu­lo­gy, Al­leyne’s cousin Di­mond Lewis Bethelmy re­called his love for both foot­ball and food. He said the ris­ing foot­ball star be­gan play­ing at five years old and dis­played a mix­ture of nat­ur­al tal­ent and hard work.

“He chased his dreams of be­com­ing a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller. Off the field he loved his bel­ly and loved cook­ing and would do it all hours of the night,” she said adding that he was de­ter­mined to be suc­cess­ful as he was mo­ti­vat­ed to give his fam­i­ly a com­fort­able life.

Bethelmy re­called the last mo­ments she spent with her son hours be­fore he was shot, danc­ing and singing af­ter eat­ing roti.

“So af­ter he eat the roti he say he hun­gry and he’s go­ing to cook. He’s go­ing to cook mac­a­roni and cheese. So, he puts on the wa­ter, and he starts to put on slows. So I say, come here, lehwe dance. So we start­ed to dance, not know­ing that would have been my last dance. But bless God. So, we danced. And I tell him, come and spin me around, learn to spin me around, so when you get your girl, you know how to spin her around, so he spin me around, not know­ing that was my last spin.”

At the end of the ser­vice, Al­leyne’s team­mates as­sist­ed him in “scor­ing” his fi­nal goal as his cof­fin was placed at the en­trance of a minia­ture goal­post, and the ball was bounced off it to score in­to the net.