By Isanella Patoir
Molika Fernandes was in church when she received the tragic news that her only son, 21-year-old Mervin Squires Junior was stabbed to death during a fight over $500.
Frustrated with the level of violence plaguing society, the mother of two is pleading with young people to put the guns and knives down.
“You see these old people how they are there all the time because in their years, nobody fight and they live right but is sheer young people going down and my son was one of them,” the mother told the News Room Monday during a visit to her Kaneville, East Bank Demerara home.
Police have arrested the 17-year-old suspect who allegedly stabbed the young man to death on Sunday at Kaneville.
Police Headquarters in a statement noted that Squires and the suspect, who grew up together in the village, were gambling cards when an issue arose over five hundred dollars
It is alleged that Squires pulled off the suspect’s necklace and in retaliation, the suspect stabbed the young man twice to the chest.
Squires was rushed to the Diamond Diagnostic Center where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
“If is $500 you and Mervin get wrong for, you could’ve talk to me I would’ve given it to you. Friend and friend does get wrong and you does fight, but no [stabbing] nobody, it’s not right and young people gotta understand this,” the mother said.
Fernandes, a Teacher of 22 years said she taught the suspect when he was a nursery school.
“Let me tell you, I’m a mother and I am sorry for the kid [suspect] because I taught that child at nursery school and to know that I have one dead and the other [to face] a judge now, what do I do?”
The victim was the eldest of two and the only son of Fernandes and her husband Mervin Squires Senior.
“If I’m going to court I don’t know, just to see a little kid standing there, it’s another kid. My son future gone and his own gone too, because I don’t want to be the judge and say life or whatever, what the court say that is it,” the mother said.
The 41-year-old mother said she was in church when she heard her son was injured.
“Before I left to go to church me and my son had a nice talk and he wash, he normally clean up the house and he left,” the mother said.
She recalled what the Pastor was preaching to the congregation moments before she received the tragic news.
“When the pastor was talking, I don’t know if the message was directly to me, but he keep telling us we must forgive our children, we must love our children and we must take care of them.”
She continued, “He [the pastor] said ‘let me see the hands of all the parents who forgive their children’… I put up my hands…like about a second after a guy came and he touch my shoulder he said [my] brother is in front of the church waiting in his car.”
While Fernandes was going to see her brother, her phone rang.
“Somebody call me and say ‘Manda where you deh…your son just get [stabbed] and he is not breathing and then I got another call saying to go to the Diamond Hospital now.”
Fernandes said her son was a very loving person, especially to his seven-year-old sister.
“I’m looking at the television every day and seeing this body get murder and I would say oh my, what is the family doing and now I have to face with this, it is a real real blow. And I just don’t want to even remember that somebody murder him, just like if he sick and he just die,” the grieving mother said.
Molika told the News Room that this is the first time she heard of her son being involved in a fight and she often times warned him about liming on the road corner.
