It is likely that Dee-Andrea Morris would have been putting in some extra hours of study to prepare for her final exams in April and May were she alive today.

Had she been successful, she would have been donning her gown come November to collect her first-class honours bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Technology (UTech), thereby completing a lifelong dream and making her friends and working, single mother proud.

"She had decided from early that nothing would stop her," remembers one of Morris' closest friends, Nahdoodoo Oakley. "She said to me: 'I am getting that first-class honours' and I said to her, 'I believe you'," Oakley recounts.

But now no one will know whether Morris, age 21 at the time of her death, would have earned the first-class degree she was striving for.

On Friday, December 14, 2007, during her second year at university, Morris was gunned down at the gate of the premises where she boarded on Market Street in Papine, St Andrew, while walking home in the company of friends from a final-semester fête on UTech's campus. Another female, one of Morris' friends, was also shot during the incident and was left with a spinal-cord injury.

wanted to make mother proud

It is not certain if the perpetrator was ever caught, but a few weeks following the incident, police claimed they killed a man, believed to be responsible for Morris' murder, during a robbery in Papine.

"She always said she wanted to do her mother so (proud). Her mother put out so much for her and she wanted to do something for her," Oakley recalls.

Morris grew up with a self-employed mother, Beverley Bennett, and sister, Shernette, in a little rural community named Maidstone in Manchester. Bennett, a dressmaker by profession, struggled, like many single mothers, to send her daughters to school. When she could not provide enough, Morris stepped in to ease some of the burden.

"I remember she saved her lunch money to pay for her students' loan and did holiday work," Bennett recounts. "She was just so determined."

In fact, the summer before entering university, Morris travelled to New York on a summer-job programme to earn some money to fund her way through college.

"Actually, she paid her first months of boarding. And she would do any little extra work to help out," Bennett relates.

dreamed of marketing career

Morris' dream was to become a marketing executive, aspiring one day to work for a company such as Red Stripe.

Those hopes were, however, violently dashed when Morris was killed.

Bennett remembers that night well. It was raining in Maidstone when she received the news.

"I was walking in the rain," Bennett recollects, describing how she lost control after learning of her youngest daughter's death. A faithful Seventh-day Adventist, Bennett questioned God that night.

"I asked God why did He do this. Why did He let this happen on our day that we go to church? What have I done?" she recounts as her voice cracks. There was a brief moment of silence.

Morris' death is still a mystery to her mother. She cannot understand why her daughter was singled out and gunned down. But Bennett is only praying that the perpetrators will some day understand the damage they are causing the society and the future of the country by killing Jamaica's youth.

"I don't know how much longer we can bear it," she says.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com