Teen stabbed 28 times in Arnos Vale dies; youth violence crisis grips St. Vincent

Tafari Browne, 17, died on Oct. 12 after being found with some 28 stab wounds in Arnos Vale. iWitness News reports on a broader crisis of youth violence in SVG.

Teen's murder in Arnos Vale reignites debate over youth violence in St. Vincent

Tafari Browne, a 17-year-old form three student at West St. George Secondary School, was found in the early hours of 9 October on a piece of land in Arnos Vale with approximately 28 stab wounds. He was transported to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care and died on 12 October. As iWitness News reports, no one has been charged and the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force has not publicly stated what led to the attack.

The columnist Guevara Leacock, writing in iWitness News, was clear that nothing in his commentary is directed at Browne's family. "Good families lose children to violence — in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and everywhere in the world," he wrote, adding that any Vincentian who passes judgment on a grieving household based on a news report "should be ashamed."

A crisis that has been building

Youth violence in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is not a new development, but the warnings have been accumulating. In March, the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force, in consultation with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of National Security, reported that bullying, gang violence, student fights and online harassment were prevalent among young people in the country. Weapons and marijuana were found on the premises of several schools.

By September, Minister of National Security St. Clair Leacock told the public that at least seven students had been arrested — not for petty offences, in his words, but for possession of firearms, burglaries and serious assaults. Reports have also surfaced that some schoolchildren now identify themselves as members of groups known as the 6ixx and the 7even.

The Minister of Education, responding to Browne's death, said he had been told of a "very heartbreaking" case involving a lack of empathy among some students — a reaction, or absence of one, that he said "really shook him up." Many children were grieving. Some, apparently, were not.

What families can do

The iWitness News column argues that certain things no government, no police force and no school can provide for a child — only a family can. Among the specific points raised: parents and guardians should know where their children are on a Friday night. It has been reported that hundreds of young people gather after school, still in uniform, at locations such as the Massy carpark and the bus stop in Richmond Hill, remaining for hours. Bullying and fighting are said to be common at these spots.

Leacock urges parents and guardians to learn the names of their children's friends and those friends' parents, and to check their children's mobile phones. "Vincentian young people, like young people the world over, live half of their life inside mobile devices," he notes. Criminals and gang leaders, he writes, use these same devices to coordinate. A child carrying two mobile phones — one potentially a "burner," used by criminal elements to communicate — is identified as a specific warning sign. Fights and criminal activity are frequently filmed and circulated; adults who are paying attention can intervene.

The column also addresses weapons directly. If firearms and knives are entering school grounds, families bear a responsibility to know what their children or wards are carrying. Parents and guardians, Leacock writes, should not fear reporting a child to the police if they have reason to believe that child is in possession of a dangerous weapon or is involved in gang activity. "It might be painful but you will be doing them a favour in the long term."

Empathy, the column argues, is not taught solely in a classroom during a health and family life period. It is absorbed at home — from watching how adults in the household speak to one another, how they treat elderly people, and whether anyone in the house ever apologises.

The structural pressures on Vincentian families

The column stops short of placing all responsibility on parents. "We on A View from the Outside are not going to pretend that this is all simply a matter of parents trying harder, because that would be dishonest," Leacock writes, "and every Vincentian listening knows it."

He points to the long-established reality of grandmothers raising grandchildren in SVG — often because a mother has gone abroad in search of a better life. These grandmothers, he notes, "educated half of the country," managing households with little or no money but producing teachers, nurses, police officers and lawyers. The structural and economic pressures on Vincentian families are, in his framing, inseparable from the conversation about who is raising the next generation.

The killing of Tafari Browne is the latest in a series of violent incidents involving young people that iWitness News and others have covered. No arrest has been made in connection with his death.

Source: iWitness News