Mother urges nation’s violent youth to change their ways

Roxanne Bess-Johnney, the mother of the man who was gunned down on J’Ouvert morning is calling on the nation’s violent youth to change their ways and move towards Christian living.

“I use to invite him to go to church and he said he ain’t ready and all now he still ain’t ready and now he can’t be ready,” Bess-Johnney told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday while fighting back tears at her home in Ottley Hall.

Bess-Johnney’s son, Akeem ‘Tallman’ Bess of Ottley Hall was pumped full of bullets on July 9 while hanging out at The Plant Shop on Lower Bay Street. He was rushed to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital (MCMH) where he died despite emergency surgery, becoming the 10th person to die violently here for 2018.

Bess-Johnney said that Akeem was the elder of two sons and the 27-year-old had two children of his own, one five and one seven years old.

She said she would normally talk to him and ask him to try his best to be a good person.

“Sometimes people say he name and he name would call in things. I not hiding his faults and I am the type of mother when they wrong, they wrong, but him getting kill like that, two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bess-Johnney told SEARCHLIGHT.

She said she is hoping that youths use her son’s death as an example of what can happen to them if they do not change from certain paths.

“My advice is change the way you are living, let Akeem’s death be an example because it not easy for parents when something happen, to cope. Nobody looking to see they child go down so. Change your ways. Change the way you living,” lamented Johnney-Bess to young people.

She said she learnt her son was shot a few hours after it happened, and she went to the MCMH but did not arrive in time to see him alive. She said Akeem, who would have been 28 on December 31, was not a person who talked much so she had no idea if he was in trouble with anyone, but she knew he was chopped a few months ago by a man from the Rilland Hill area.

“I am not happy, but everything is in God’s hands. The morning he was shot, I was home and I was feeling like something choking me. I felt funny and depressed then a friend came and told me them shot Akeem,” said Bess-Johnney who added that she is still trying to come to grips with his death, but is holding firm, “because I know the God I serve.”

Akeem is not a stranger to the law and violence and last February, police issued a wanted bulletin for him in relation to a robbery that took place in Edinboro on January 16, 2017. He was described as armed and dangerous.

After the bulletin, the 27-year-old gave himself up on Saturday, February 17 with the assistance of a lawyer and was charged with stealing several items including cash. When he appeared at the Serious Offences Court, he was granted EC$5,000 bail and was still on bail for the offence when he was killed.

Police are investigating the matter.