With a catch in her voice, Margaret McCollin recalled how she raised Jakeil Jaden Small from a babe in arms, only to lose him to a killer’s knife on Friday night.
Small, who would have turned 26 this Friday, was stabbed multiple times while he visited family at Regent Hill, The Pine, St Michael. He was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, but later died of his wounds.
McCollin, of Henley, St John, said she took Jakeil from his mother when he was a mere three days old.
“I raised him from three days old; three days old; he was just a small little something and I bring him to that age for somebody to kill him,” she said as she fought back tears.
She told the DAILY NATION she had no idea what had occurred.
But she said Small, a former student of the Deighton Griffith School, was in the area because he was visiting his sister.
“Jakeil was now united with children from before, that his mother had, that he never knew, so he was spending some time out there and that was why he was out that side,” she explained.
She was at work when she got the news, but by the time she rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital it was too late.
Small was a trained carpenter but was recently laid off. He was expecting his first child with his girlfriend.
His father declined to speak, saying: “Right now I can’t deal with that. I now dealing with a burial right now.”
But a number of women in the area spoke highly of Small.
“He was a cool person. He never interfere with no person at all. All Jakeil used to do when you trouble he is pass and skin he mout’. He would laugh,” said one.
Another went so far as to call for the head of the person who committed the killing.
“Not locking up; locking up too good for that body. Prison too good [for that person]. To go in there and eat out all the taxpayers’ money now?”
As police investigatiions continue, Small’s death is still being treated as unnatural and not a murder until the post mortem has been performed.
There have been five murders so far for the year. (HLE)
