Parents told to take responsibility seriously

“You’ve got to tell the children when they are doing foolishness as parents,” he said yesterday.

“Parents have got a responsibility, a serious responsibility. We must admonish the children. The Good Book said who the Lord loves He chastens. You got to get some sort of correction. I’m not saying you must be physically beating up children, but you’ve got to let them know they are wrong. You can’t encourage their bad behaviour because then it gets to this,” he declared.

The DPP noted parents and others in society were quick to cast blame.

“Everybody blames the Government. ‘The Government ain’t doing enough’, but although you provide the opportunities, they don’t use the opportunities. You can’t make a man use an opportunity if you provide it for him,” he said.

“They (parents) don’t do their part and they blame the teachers, they blame the church, they blame the Government. Everybody gets blamed. Every person seems to get blamed other than themselves.”

Seale noted today’s youth have an opportunity to attend both primary and secondary school. Older generations, he added, only attended up to Seventh Standard and women “were destined” to become “needle workers” while men had to seek a trade, unless they obtained “a vestry scholarship”.

“Now everybody has a cell phone with all capacity to google to find out things, to be informed. All the knowledge in your hand but they are using it for the wrong thing,” he said, as he stressed young people were no fools.

He added there were also countless opportunities to further their studies at skills training centres and other places that “open at night so you can go learn something”.

The DPP was making his submissions on what sentence Gabriel Shando Hayde should get for shooting a man to death five years ago. He suggested the tariff for Hayde should be set at 45 years based on the unprovoked nature of the killing.

Hayde, of Colleton, St John, was found guilty of murdering Kerwin Howell on February 16, 2020.

“I’m sorry the young man lost his life but I ain’t had nothing to do with it,” Hayde said yesterday.

It was this comment, along with some from Hayde’s parents, which drew the ire from the island’s top prosecutor.

In his pre-sentencing report, Hayde’s father blamed “bad company”, saying he believed his

son was innocent, while Hayde’s mother stressed he was “a good boy”.

The pre-sentencing report, however, revealed that while Hayde was a good student at primary school and settled in well in first form at Deighton Griffith School, he started getting into trouble when he entered second form.

His parents, Seale said, should have noticed the signs.

“He started breaking school rules. He started selling snacks on the school compound so he was a hustler from a young age. He started skipping classes, truancy, gambling, wearing a scarf contrary to school regulations, and he was involved in occasional fights,” the DPP read.

He added Hayde’s parents would have known of the incidents because the school would have been sending home reports.

“If you had the fear of parents that I had of mine, you weren’t doing those things because eventually your parents would know and that’s when they kick into action.”

Seale said in the psychological report, Hayde said he saw nothing wrong with smoking marijuana and nothing wrong with the block culture, “and he didn’t believe he would end up there (in court).”

“And his parents didn’t believe he would end up in here even when he was going down that slippery slope.”

Hayde was represented by Senior Counsel Angella Mitchell-Gittens, who had admitted there were no mitigating factors in the offence.

She said the fact that a firearm was used and that the killing took place on “broad daylight” in front of witnesses were aggravating factors. She also conceded there was no provocation.

However, Mitchell-Gittens pleaded with the court to accept that Hayde was still a young man who could be rehabilitated, as she pointed to his age and his hitherto clean record.

Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell will sentence Hayde on February 6 next year. (HLE)