Father of teen beaten by taxi driver wants justice
When Clinton Smith saw the video of his 15-year-old son, Ricardo, being beaten by a taxi man, he was furious. His anger escalated when he saw the bruises on his son’s face and arm.
“What I heard happened was that this guy comes at a speed to the point where he hit my child on his hand, broke off his rear view mirror. My son proceeded to walk the same way because I’m always telling him, ‘walk away from trouble’. This guy comes out of his car, grabs my son by his back pack while my son was still walking away, and seh: ‘My yute, yuh nuh see yuh bruk off mi mirror’, and my son in turn said to him, ‘Why yuh come over so far on the right’. And after accosting my son, he then pulled out his belt and hit my son,” he told
“My son has a bruise a little to his eye cause he hit him with the buckle,” he added.
THE WEEKEND STAR.
Smith said that he reported the matter to the Spanish Town police, but is yet to see any form of justice being done.
“I press charges, and nobody can find him. I find that so hard to believe. I don’t think the urgency to get this guy off the streets is enough,” he said.
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Smith said that the incident has drastically affected his son.
“My son is in pain. That’s demoralising, and that could be something that could scar him for life. Because no matter what you do to a body, it heals, but mentally it never goes away,” he said.
Smith explained that corporal punishment is not something that he’d administer on his child.
“I would spank my son when he was younger, but now he pass that age, so we talk,” he said, adding that he would never use a belt buckle, or beat the child in public,” he said.
Efforts to get a comment from the police regarding the matter proved futile.
Many people believe that Friday the 13th brings bad luck, and Sevina was one of them.
“Growing up, I was hearing that Friday the 13th was a bad luck day and lot of bad things happen on that day, like more accidents, more deaths, more fights, more quarrels, all that stuff. Even when I was older and I owned my own business, my customers and friends would say that one should be cautious on that day because bad things happen,” she said.
She told THE WEEKEND STAR that things changed when she got pregnant with her first daughter.
Her baby, Olivia, was due on July 20, 2007, but she came on Friday the 13th instead.
“Her brother, who was born on the 13th of July some years before her, was telling me that she was going to be born on his birthday. But I was not even paying attention to that. I went in the hospital on Thursday afternoon but she did not come ‘til Friday morning,” she
said. “I didn’t realise it was the 13th until her brother called and said that his sister born on his birthday and that was when I realised that it was Friday the 13th.”
All the bad things that Sevina heard about the date changed the moment she laid eyes on Olivia.
“When I looked at her and I see that she had 10 fingers and toes and her eyes are in the right place and her nose was in the right place, in that moment I said that it (Friday 13th) means nothing because if I had a child like her on this day, it is no bad luck, it has to be a blessing. Whatever I was hearing during that time from customers and friends all that went through the door,” she said.