By RICARDO WELLS 

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

THE pervasiveness of illegal firearms and the “kill or be killed culture” perpetuated by them are leading to the destruction of inner-city communities, a mother preparing to bury a second son in four months has said.

Rosalie Bain, the mother of the country’s most recent homicide victim, insists more needs to be done to “once and for all address the problem with guns”.

On January 1, Ms Bain’s 19-year-old son Terrance Rolle Jr was shot and killed as he was leaving the New Year’s Day Junkanoo Parade. Rolle Jr’s murder marked the country’s first for 2019. Last Friday night, his older brother Barron “Jam Dawg” Roberts, 30, ate a final meal at home before leaving to spend a few hours with some friends.

He was fatally shot in his head just hours later on Hospital Lane, becoming the country’s 23rd  murder for 2019 according to this newspaper’s records. Yesterday, police said a 42-year-old man was in custody in connection with the incident. 

According to their mother, both of her sons were “gunned down by the streets”.

“The only thing I find myself questioning is where in the world all these guns coming from? Guns are destroying us and no one, I mean no one, can tell us where or why these guns coming here. You have guns ripping our people apart and the powers, [people in control] aren’t saying anything about the guns.

“This my second son gone like this and I need to know now, where are these guns coming  from? They have to be coming from somewhere.

“Go look at these killings… these are guns coming from somewhere unknown, blowing up the lives of people. We have to put our foot down,” she said.

Ms Bain issued a plea to residents living in inner-city communities like the one encompassing her Parker Street home - Bain and Grants Town - to do more to uplift the members of their neighbourhoods.

If the scenes of both her sons’ murders were mapped by constituency, both would have fallen under the boundaries of Bain and Grants Town.

Effectively, the two men were killed in the neighbourhood they had called home their entire lives.

“I am hoping that the children see what this is doing to them and their families. It needs to stop. It’s too much,” the distraught mother said. “Too much killings, too much violence and it seems to be stuck in the hood. I grew up [in this same community]. It was nothing like this.”

On the issue of violence in the inner-city, she added: “Now everyday it’s something else. We are getting our families destroyed and bringing about hurt after hurt. It needs to stop.

“It’s getting worse. Everyday somebody is getting hurt. You might not hear of it, but everyday someone in our neighbourhood is getting hurt. We need to bring back a love for each other. It has to stop. This community is too small. We need each other.

“This goes beyond the church and the schools… it is up to us and what we work to make better. We need love. We need understanding.

“If all of us grow up together, how can I do harm to you? We can disagree, but if I have real love for you, I can’t hurt you. This one killing that one and that one killing this one, why? It has to be a reason. We need love, man. We need understanding.”

Recalling her sons’ deaths, Ms Bain said she turned to prayer for her basic survival, telling The Tribune her grief comes and goes moment to moment.

In the lead up to Mother’s Day this Sunday, she said her eldest son had already started preparing to make the day special for her, given the earlier loss of her younger son.

“Just a couple of days ago he was sitting down with me making Mother’s Day plans to go to church and do something after that; now all of that has been wiped away, come to an end, come to a full stop,” she said.

“Me and Barron have also been close. But after the death of [TJ] we grew closer because he saw what that did to me. My boys were like my friends. They looked out for me in a way that made be happy to be their mother. Them two together, they were close and they were the ones that made it happen for our family.

“They had their little moments, but they were close.”

She continued: “I’m trying to cope. While I have other kids, on a day like that you want all there. It was already going to be tough without [TJ], but now Barron… I have to just take it one day at a time.

“Until I lay him to rest, I have to go just one day at a time.”

Neither of the two brothers left behind children.

Ms Bain said her memories of them will live on in the good they did for her and her remaining kids.

As of yesterday, Ms Bain said she was still struggling to financially recover from the cost incurred from the burial of her younger son.

She said her family will now “weather a storm” to make another funeral possible.

“We are a set of people that know how to come together now and weather this storm. It will be rough, but we will have to find a way to get this done,” Ms Bain said, sitting at her dining room table.

“God has never forsaken me, and in this circumstance, I know he will see me and my family through.”