By Petulia Clarke, Staff Reporter 
Latoya Brown (right) chats with friends in Tivoli on Monday. She was shot in the head and blinded in West Kingston last July. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
THIRTY-EIGHT civilians were shot and injured during the July 7-11 violence in West Kingston, last year.
Among them was Latoya Brown, then 19, who was shot in the temple along North Street -- allegedly by a lawman. The bullet severed her optic nerve and blinded her.
Twelve-year-old Denham Town High School student Kadian Bourne was in bed in Tivoli sleeping in the daytime, when she was shot through the knee by a bullet.
Evelyn Ruddock, of Bond Street, then nine months pregnant, lost her husband and subsequently her son, who died in hospital and Winston Stewart had gone to the shop at the corner of Last Street to buy food, when his knee was shot out.
News reports were that on the weekend of July 7, Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams and a number of police officers battled gunmen in Tivoli Gardens. About 27 persons, including a Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldier and a police corporal, lost their lives.
One year later, Wayne Bartley, field officer for the Social Support Fund (SSF), which works with the victims, said hospital bills have piled up.
The SSF was launched after the riots last July by Carla Seaga, wife of Opposition Leader and M.P. for the area, Edward Seaga, to raise money for the relatives of the victims. Donations were received from concerned citizens and friends and organisers delivered welfare, medical and school supplies to applicants.
Many of the victims, Mr. Bartley said, are still traumatised and some are out of work. There has been no support from the Government and the church people have stopped coming. West Kingston victims are no longer in the news.
Mr. Bartley said yesterday that the SSF had written to the Minister of Health to get the hospital bills of those injured written off. There has been no response and another letter will be written. The bills have surpassed $100,000 for the 60 persons he has on a list.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bartley said the relationship with the police is tense again.
"The other day it was coming on good, we had the youth club and police came and spoke to the youths. (But) Because of this (two killings on Saturday), all that might be eroded."
LATOYA BROWN
On weekends she'll be at sessions, partying up a storm.
During the days, the 20-year-old divides her time between caring for her three-year-old son and scoring 'As' in computer classes at school.
She washes and helps the boy when she can with homework, but she never ventures near the stove, she said.
And occasionally she'll have nightmares and cry, especially when she sees a policeman or hears gunshots. Life has been "alright", Latoya Brown, said. "Nothing worries me".
In fact, some times the Tivoli Gardens resident even forgets that she's blind, her sight erased after a bullet tore through her left temple last July, leaving her to live in darkness forever.
Except for the white cane, this feisty, well-dressed Jamaica Society for the Blind student could be mistaken for any other Tivoli teenager, as she has retained her sense of style.
Clad in trendy skirt and top, hair perfectly coifed and nose ring complementing her perfectly powdered face, 'Lattie', as she's called, said that if she could live July 9, 2001 all over again, she wouldn't have gone out with her girlfriend.
She said that evening she was following a friend somewhere when on reaching the corner of North and Regent Streets they were stopped by lawmen.
"By the time I turned around I heard shots. I didn't know I was shot, I could feel blood on two sides of my face. My friend bawled out 'is just two little girls', I fell to the ground and continue to hear shots, I looked up and couldn't see nothing."
In the next hour or so, she said, she was transferred by handcart to the Denham Town Police Station where, after calling for help for several minutes, she was told there was no jeep to take her to hospital. The same handcart took her to hospital -- eventually, after the driver had to seek cover several times when shooting got out of control.
"I just have to move on," said Lattie, who wanted to be a cosmetologist. "When my sisters are at school I have to help myself, I do the washing but I don't go near the fire." Her sisters and mother help take care of baby Dacquon, whose face she said she has memorised.
"Most time him talking to me and say 'look Mommy', then he realise and say 'feel Mommy'," she said. "I don't really think about things."
For now she says that she still has fun, and her enemies -- those who never spoke to her before -- have made peace. The police on the other hand are still on her blacklist.
"I don't talk to them. If I'm walking with someone and one of them (police) asks what's wrong with me, I just curse them and move on."
Lattie's plans for the most part include making life for herself and her son. She has done remarkably well so far, as she not only takes the bus by herself to Old Hope Road, but has mastered Braille and is good at computers.
She is enrolled in a mobilisation programme at the Jamaica School for the Blind, where she has learnt how to use a cane, read Braille, and new life skills to enable her to live independently.
"At first I used to get depressed and cry every day, but I just give that up and get over it," she said.
EVELYN RUDDOCK
Three weeks after she had cradled her dying husband in her arms, Evelyn Ruddock lost her new-born child who died a week after it was admitted at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital.
Her husband, Lloyd, was shot and killed on Bond Street during the unrest in West Kingston. On July 8, Mr. Ruddock had gone to purchase food to prepare breakfast when he was shot and killed. He died in her arms clutching his chest. She was then nine months pregnant.
Today, Mrs. Ruddock still wears her ring, still has nightmares and is still crying.
"I went to hell and tell the devil I don't want to come back," she said.
Sitting on the steps leading to her house on Bond Street, she wipes her tears and says that church and her 10-year-old son have kept her sane.
"Everything dredge up again," she said referring to shootings on Monday and Saturday before that. "The grief was not complete, but everything just start up again."
She said that she has been taking things one day at a time. She, like other victims, has been seeing a psychiatrist sponsored by Mrs. Seaga.
"If I were to re-live that time, I wouldn't be here," she said. "I have nightmares about it. If I were to catch that man whose hands the bullet came out of, I would kill him with my bare hands."
In an earlier interview, Mrs. Ruddock said she remembered her husband running into the house, clutching his chest. She thought it was a joke, that he was pretending that he was shot. He was shot the Sunday morning and his body moved on Monday. Mr. Ruddock was a small farmer from St. Thomas who had come to see his wife, as he did every weekend.
She said she has had no assistance from the Government.
"My son asks me, when we going to move to somewhere where he can be free," she said. "But I'm not working now, and even if I were to work and come back to this hell, I don't think I would make it. My wish is just to leave Jamaica, it's my born country, but I just want to leave."
A memorial service for Mr. Ruddock will be held this weekend.
WINSTON STEWART
Mr. Stewart was on his way to buy food at a shop on Last Street when his knee was shot out. He will have surgery in August to re-break and mend the knee that has not responded to treatment so far.
Now on a crutch, Mr. Stewart said that his baby-mother, friends and family have to help out because he can't sustain a job.
A former vendor in Coronation Market, he said that he lost everything July 7, as he had to run and leave his goods.
"I have to just go on, it happen already, I just have to understand that fretting won't help," he said.
He "don't think too great" about the police right now.
"If I had stayed in the house this wouldn't happen," he said. "It's one year and I still can't help my kids."
Mr. Stewart has seven children.
KADIAN BOURNE
A student of Denham Town Comprehensive High, 12-year-old Kadian Bourne was in her house sleeping on July 7 when she was shot through the knee.
"I was sleeping and my cousin woke me up to tell me that I was shot," she said.
Kadian receives counselling occasionally and, apart from being concerned about the unsightly scar on her leg, says that she's doing fine.
She doesn't know whose bullet hit her but says that she "don't like the police anymore".
"I used to think they secured people but I don't like to see them anymore," she said.
She now lives in Tivoli with a guardian and her family and says that she's "afraid of gunshots now".
Her grades are good, she said, and she doesn't think much about July, 2001.
Leroy Thompson, who was shot in the abdomen, still visits the doctor to get rid of the lumps in his belly. He's due X-rays.
Sharon Marsh, who was shot in the stomach, still has a bullet lodged in her back. She now operates a phone card business from her home.
Cecil Palmer, who was shot in the side, is back at work with Metropolitan Parks and Markets (MPM).
Germaine Nelson, who lost his leg, is still undergoing treatment and therapy with his prosthetic leg.
A memorial and church service will be held in the area this Sunday where a monument in the form of a cross with the names of the injured and dead will be erected.
