NCFC Speaks Out on Murders of 8 Minors in 2 Months

The murder of fifteen-year-old Dwayne Gabourel continues to play in the minds of households across the country. The promising SJC student was targeted by a gunman as he went to buy bread last Saturday; shot multiple times inside a store on New Road, a short distance from where he lived. But in the last two and a half months, seven other minors have been killed. Laddie Gillett was the first back on July fourteenth and since then: nine-year-old Jamir McKoy, fourteen-year-old Kwame Williams, fifteen-year-old Niccanor Fermin, sixteen-year-old Shamar Nicholas, Sherane Cardenas and Michael Henry. It’s a frightening statistic that has the country concerned. News Five spoke with the Director of the National Committee For Families and Children, Margaret Nicholas today.

Margaret Nicholas, Executive Director, NCFC

“It is indeed a sad state of affair and I on behalf of the National Commission of Families and Children would also like to join in stating our condolences to all of those families. For me, as I try to understand what is happening, I think that we have and I say, I mean all of us, in some way of the other have failed our children because this should not have happened one time; more so eight times.  Eight young, aspiring young men have lost their lives simply because of gun violence. I cannot even imagine the pain and the trauma that the mothers and the families are experiencing. And I can’t even imagine the kind of message that this kind of violence is sending across our nation. So it’s not a matter of not having good parents, it’s not a matter of not being in a good home, but he is a victim. He is a victim. And the way that he died. I mean looking at the mother, listening to her on Facebook, it just give you cold seed.  And the reality is that you realize that it could be your child. It could have been your child. Because I could have sent my child to pick up that bread and if it is because of the color shirt that he was wearing, mistaken identity or whatever it is, it is really traumatic.”