The Tribune

THE murder of little Kenton Seymour, Jr, on Tuesday night has shocked The Bahamas.

Just four years old and sitting on the lap of his mother in the family’s car, when a wild shot from a gunman smashed through a window and struck Kenton. He was taken to hospital, but could not be saved.

Four years old.

This should not be happening. We know this should not be happening. And yet we have been here before.

In 2017, an eight-year-old boy, Eugene Woodside, was sitting at home doing his homework when a stray bullet ripped through the wall of his home and struck him, killing him.

That murder itself came just over a month after another eight-year-old boy was killed in his home in Bain and Grants Town. Children exactly where they should be, murdered even in the arms of their mothers.

So we express our horror. We feel grief. We hear the hurt in the words of Kenton’s mother as she talks of not having realised he had been hit and when she did “all I could do was scream”.

But we have been here before. We have grieved before. What will it take to stop us from being here again?

There is a war on our streets. Police have called it a gang war, a turf war. But our children are the casualties. Not just Kenton, but those who have been injured or killed beforehand. And too many young people being caught up in the gang culture along the way.

It is often said that in the US, if nothing was done after the Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20 children between the ages of six and seven, plus six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, then nothing was ever going to be done. Once it was accepted that change did not have to take place after the massacre of children, nothing was ever going to be worse than that, to cause a greater outcry. And true to form, very little changed, and such shootings have become normal.

As we reel in shock at the death of little Kenton, the question has to be asked what will we do to try to stop this from happening again. Not just for Kenton. Not just for Eugene Woodside. But for all the children finding themselves living in a society where violence rules with impunity.

There is talk of police clampdowns, but we’re in the middle of one of those and Tuesday night saw four people shot, two of them dying. Whatever is being done, it’s not working right now.

Legislatively, there seems to be little appetite for the government to increase punishments.

And administratively, as Front Porch points out in today’s Tribune, lengthy delays in the court process mean that criminals have no fear of imminent punishment. Pull the trigger and you may go to prison in five, six, seven years’ time. Maybe longer. Maybe never. Where’s the fear of being held to account if the courts don’t have the resources to actually hold people to account?

The changes needed to fix this are not short-term. They are not cheap. They reach throughout every part of our society. So where are those solutions?

It is not enough to come out and say a few words of sorrow and then move on until this happens again.

It is not enough for our leaders to post to Facebook or Twitter and then not march into the House of Assembly and say things must change and they must change now, and here is our plan of what we will do to save our children.

We too grieve for Kenton, and send our condolences to his family. But we also call on our leaders and ask: What now?

Human smuggling

Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander is quite right to call on the public as the force continues to investigate the deaths of at least 17 people in a capsized boat during a human smuggling operation – but it is likely to fall on deaf ears in many cases.

Calling on members of the Haitian community to come forward to identify family members poses one particular problem – only two of those rescued had work permits to be here, so how many relatives of those on board have permits to be here is a significant question. If they come forward to help, but do not have documentation to show they are allowed to be here, will they too be loaded onto a plane and sent back to Haiti? For many, that is a risk they may not be willing to take.

If there’s no amnesty for anyone coming forward with information, people are not going to come forward, it’s as simple as that.

The force can work with intermediaries in the Haitian community to gather such information, but again success may be limited.

As for tracking the operation itself, there’s strong talk about working with international partners and so on, but we’ve been doing that already and still this tragedy occurred. What about a specific reward? A promise of witness protection or relocation? What about tougher penalties? There is talk of charges of manslaughter or murder – we’ll see if that holds true. And who are the people behind the scenes, the organised criminals behind such operations? Catching foot soldiers won’t deal with the root of the problem.

But Commissioner Fernander has to try, he has to ask. We hope that more could be done to give people a chance to answer safely.