Andrew Wildes, Gleaner Writer

GUIDANCE COUNSELLORS from across the parish of St Thomas joined forces yesterday to help counsel and console the traumatised students and teachers of the Morant Bay Primary School in the wake of the brutal rape and murder of nine-year-old Courtney Walker, a student of the school.

When The Gleaner team visited the Morant Bay Primary School early yesterday morning, the signs of a grieving school were everywhere. Large speaker boxes at the front of the schoolyard softly played gospel music, as the students gathered with their teachers and counsellors.

In the classroom where Courtney once sat and was tutored, the counselling was well under way.

It was agonising to listen to grade-three students paint a graphic picture of the wounds inflicted on their classmate, who everyone described as kind and helpful.

"He was covered, but the sheet was bloody, " one tiny girl shared, when asked to describe what she had seen.

On Thursday, young Courtney Walker died in the Princess Margaret Hospital in the parish. The boy had been sexually molested and then stabbed to death. One man was taken into custody for the incident.

Principal Esther McGowan was clearly dazed by the senseless crime.

"It really, it shocked me. I cried, I ... won't describe it, but it has really impacted me, students and teachers," she said.

"It's like I'm having 'goose-pimples' all over from morning, and I am just considering when this brutal slaying of our children will cease," McGowan said.

Margarine Harris, president of the St Thomas Guidance Counsellors Association says the students are responding well to the counselling.

"Well, I think they're coping well, because some were crying and we told them that it was fine for them to cry. With his immediate class -one of the things we're allowing them to do is to draw or write what they remember about him so, from time to time, they can go back and remember their classmates," she said.

When the The Gleaner's news team visited the home of the murdered child in Bamboo River, St. Thomas, his family was still trying to come to grips with the sudden tragedy.

"A nuh suh much say CJ dead enuh, a jus how dem do him," said Roma Taylor, the mother of the nine-year-old.

Many questions

Courtney's grandmother, his two sisters and friends sat in the dusty yard looking disoriented.

There were so many questions as the mourning family recounted the painful incident again and again.

It happened in broad daylight. His mother couldn't afford to send him to school on Thursday and so he decided to help his neighbour Mitsy, by carrying her baby as they went to the river.

"We have one slice a 'toeto' out a river and me cut up the 'toeto' fi mi, him, the baby, and Sashine," Misty said, recounting the close bond they shared the morning of his death.

As the morning progressed, Mitsy sent him home to eat breakfast. It was the last time she would see him.

"Him say, do nuh send me up, him go all up inna di tree...so me say a my fault... cause him beg me nuh send him up," she shared.

For the family, the issue was reconciling Courtney's good character with his horrific end.

"Me a 62 and from me deh yah me neva hear seh none a my people dem do nuh wicked thing fi dem yah wicked something happen to we," Courtney's grandmother, Sarah Carlyle, shared with her friend Rosetta, as the family and members of the community tried desperately to come to terms with the boy's death.

"Wha CJ do fi deserve that wicked sinting?

"The reason why CJ dead so a chu him willing enuh. You can call him and say do this fi me, pick up that," his mother said of her son, who had developed a reputation for being kind.

In his home and small community, Courtney's kindness was always appreciated. The story is that Courtney's attacker sent him to buy a cigarette and upon return, he was abducted.

andrew.wildes@gleanerjm.com