Relatives of slain granny Marlene Grant were still in shock at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday, as they told the media she was undeserving of such a death. “We never do anyone anything. She never did anything to deserve that, she was a good woman who stand up for everyone,” some relatives, who did not want to be identified, said. “She didn't deserve to die like that. She used to help out anybody, she wasn't no gangster.
“Everyone loved her because she cared about her children and grandchildren.” Relatives were at times lost for words. One of her daughters, who confessed that she had never drank or smoked in her life, said she was now craving both vices. After he finished the autopsy, pathologist Dr Valery Alexandrov came outside and told the family Grant was shot 10 times as she sought to escape her killers. He said Grant was facing her attackers at first and then ran.
She was then shot five times in the leg, once in the shoulder, twice in the back, with the bullets piercing her heart, liver and kidneys, and finally twice in the head, although the bullets missed her brain. Grant’s sister, Patricia James, said she knows her sister’s murder will not be solved, just as her granddaughter Tecia Henry’s killing in 2009 has not been solved. “First they killed my granddaughter and now my sister. This wouldn’t get solved because since then no crime has been solved,” she said.
Grant’s killing pushed the murder toll to 309 for the year, six more than last year at the same time. On June 13, 2009, 10-year-old Tecia Henry went missing after going to a nearby parlour in her John John, Laventille community. Four days later, her decomposing body was found stuffed in a hole beneath a neighbour’s house. Her autopsy revealed she was strangled.
Henry’s death sparked protest and outrage from residents and was used as a catalyst for a peace accord in the John John community. To date, a billboard still stands at John John with the terms of the peace agreement, which was dubbed the Tecia Henry Peace Accord, although the treaty was broken within a month when gang violence erupted again.
On July 5 that year, one of the suspects questioned in connection with the murder of Henry was murdered. Police found the body of Ricardo “Docs” Mc Carthy, 49, of Block Eight, Laventille, at a track off Belle Vue Terrace, Long Circular Road, St James. Police believed then that Mc Carthy went to the area after he received death threats from his neighbours over Henry’s murder.