START BACK HANGINGS

This is the cry of Ruby Adams- Johnson, the grief-stricken grandmother of 15-year-old Abiela Adams whose semi-nude body, throat slit, was found on a roadside in Courland Tobago yesterday.

“It is time to do the right thing, start to hang them,” Adams-Johnson declared in her call for a resumption of the death penalty.

“That is what they supposed to do. They know that is what they supposed to do. Tell them, let they do that.” Adams of Mary’s Hill, a small village next to Whim, is Tobago’s fourth murder victim for 2017.

Tobago recorded four murders for 2016.

A male friend of the dead teenager is said to be assisting police with investigations into the incident.

Adams’ body was found at 3.30 am yesterday at the side of the road off Solenn Lane, Fidelis Heights (North), Courland, which lies between the villages of Black Rock and Plymouth.

Assistant Commissioner of Police, Tobago Division, Garfield Moore told Sunday Newsday that around 12.15 am yesterday, the teenager’s mother, Katherine Gill, reported Adams as missing at the Old Grange Police Station.

Moore said relatives as well as police conducted searches in Crown Point and surrounding areas and a relative stumbled upon the body at 3.30 am, at Courland.

“No one was held in connection with the murder. However, a male friend (of the teenager) is assisting police officers with their ongoing investigations. He would have been one of the last people who would have interacted with her, so we are speaking to him,” Moore said yesterday.

Adams was a Third Form student of the Signal Hill Secondary School and played football for her school as well as being a member of the Under-15 national team. When Sunday Newsday visited Mary’s Hill yesterday, residents were in a state of shock at hearing the news of her murder.

Adams lived with her mother at the corner of Mary’s Hill junction within walking distance of the Whim Anglican Primary School.

Persons gathered at the slain teenager’s home said her mother was not there, and could not say where she was at that time.

Her grandmother could not believe she died in such a horrific manner.

“Knowing the child that she was, I could not believe what I have heard. I only know she wasn’t rude. She wasn’t disrespectful to people. She was loving, She was nice and when I got the news I start to bawl,” Adams- Johnson told TV6 News.

Recalling her grand-daughter’s prowess in cricket and football, Adams-Johnson said: “She striving to reach the goal she want.

Why she life have to go like this?” One resident, who described the teenager as respectable young lady in the area who was not known to wander out late at night, said news of her death was a shock since he and others in the village would constantly look out for and be ready to defend young women.

A woman operating a food stall at the junction described Adams as a beautiful child who visited her stall often.

Several residents blamed Adams’ murder on an “outsider” saying “Tobago men won’t watch a young lady and kill her just so.” “It’s one set of new taxi drivers coming over here to work,” one claimed.

The residents said they have asked, on several occasions, for surveillance cameras to installed at the Mary’s Hill junction but to no avail. Just two weeks ago, members of the Police Service, Tobago Division, hosted a first town meeting at the nearby Whim Community Centre, not far from Adams’ home. At the meeting residents and the members of the Village Council applauded the police for their work, saying there was a decrease in criminal activity in the area.

Meanwhile, manager of the Signal Hill Secondary’s girls’ football team, Syandene Blackman, described Adams as a dedicated and talented footballer.

“Abiela also played cricket. She would have touched the lives of everyone she came into contact with, both in Trinidad and Tobago.

She was a member of the National Under 15 football team as well.

Always smiling and making everyone around her smile. She was also a well-behaved student and always portrayed model deportment.

Parental support was never an issue. Her mum was always there to support her,” said Blackman.

Blackman said the persons who killed Adams, “I must say have to be really heartless.” “Every time you look at Kady, which she was sometimes referred to as, all you can do is just fall in love with this beautiful soul. I know us at school will have a hard time dealing with her death.

“All females now need to realise how valuable our existence is and put the necessary measures in place to sustain our lives.

“We need to start looking out and protecting each other. We need to unite and show the world that we are no longer going to accept this as just another murder, we are not going to accept violence against us as common or normal, but we will grow in strength and do whatever it is necessary to show the world that our lives do matter,” she said.

On Facebook, scores of Tobagonians expressed anger and hurt at the news of Adams murder.

Said one commentator: “To wake up to this kind of news, it’s like war of the times, like Tobago trying to compete with Trinidad.

Slit throat, what next body parts in a bag found somewhere, what are we and I say we Police Civilians. Everybody need to put a foot in this is going too far its February 11th 2017, four confirm murders non-solved? Lord Oh lord.” Another commentator cast blame on the police, citing insufficient effort to curb the increasing crime crisis: “We need a new police commissioner and revised structure as to who he reports to with clear expectations of desired policing results. Wanton countrywide violent crimes with a single digit detection rate are a clear sign of a failed justice system, ineffective policing, and a society lacking in purpose and cherished values.” (Additional reporting by Olive Elizabeth Gonzales and Kinnesha George)