Slaughter of the innocents By Noel Thompson, Freelance Writer WESTERN BUREAU: SINCE JANUARY this year, 10 children including five babies between 13 months old and 32 months old have been brutally murdered, police statistics show. For the corresponding period last year, six were slain while at least 60 have been killed over the past five years. The Constabulary Communications Network (CCN) the public information arm of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), said children are classified from ages one-day-old to 13-years-old. Statistics also show that the weapons featured in these murders were mainly guns and knives, while at least five of the children's houses were fire-bombed. Many of these cases remained unsolved. Those killed since January are Kimone Lewis, 12 of Rose Hall, St. Catherine; Nikita Fraser, 3 of Mount Imus, St. Catherine; Akena Dockery, 5 of Feddies Road, Kingston; Nevado Scott, 10 of Tavern Drive, Papine in Kingston; Nataki Louis, 3 of Dunrobin Road, Manchester; Shavanna Lynch, 13 of Cotton Tree Gully, Clarendon; Shaun Boothe 13 of Bucknor district in May Pen, Clarendon; Wayne Martin, 16 months old and Johanna Allen, 32 months old and her 13 month-old sister Anastasia Mason of Norwood, St. James. Allen and Mason died after their home was fire-bombed as they slept last Wednesday morning. The attack on their home was in reprisal for the death of Mark Lawrence, 20, who was killed the previous day a murder in which the babies' uncle Ian English had been implicated. The babies' mother Andrea Forbes, managed to flee from the house and escaped through a gully. Three years ago, a similar scene unfolded at Salt Spring, St. James, when gunmen fire-bombed a home which had three children, their mother and a friend inside. All five perished in the fire. Among the more recent bizarre murders was that of 12-year-old Kimone Lewis, of Rose Hall district in St. Catherine. Last Friday, Kimone's mother sent her on an errand. When she did not return a few hours later, a search was launched and her body was discovered in bushes with stab wounds to the neck and the face. She had also been scalped, the police reported.
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