Grandparents of Kevin Spring: Why kill a 15-year old?

TWO grandparents of the late Kevin Kyle Spring, known to his loved ones as KK, is asking why anyone would kill a 15-year-old child who was not involved in any criminal activities. They spoke to Newsday minutes after his funeral on Monday at Dennie's Funeral Home in Belmont.

Spring was shot dead by gunmen in Diego Martin while washing cars on February 5. Also killed was his cousin Joseph Spring, 35, and Joseph's friend Rondel John, 33, while Joseph's father Rawl, 58, was shot but his condition was not known.

During the reading of the eulogy, his grandaunt Francilla Glaud fondly remembered him as a quiet boy who everyone could have relied on to do things such as going to the parlour. She said he had liked putting a smile on everyone's face, ran a car wash to help maintain his family, and had big dreams such as to own a car for him and his cousin to drive.

Paternal grandmother Carmen Scott told Newsday, "Words can't express how I'm feeling, right now. He is gone too soon, and the conditions under which he was taken...It is not comfortable. Justice will be served. We have to get justice for my grandson.

"He wasn't in no gang. He wasn't in no thing. He was 15 years old, and he had a bright future ahead of him. We want justice, not by man but by God.”

Asked if she had any favourite memory of Spring, she said she had many as he had been such a special child.

"He was loving, quiet and hardly used to talk. But when he was around us he used to make us laugh. Sometimes he would take the mother's phone and call me and say, 'Granny, ah tiefin' a call, right. How you doing?'

"Everything about him from birth was pleasant. Pleasant memories I have of my grandson."

Maternal grandfather Lennox Spring spoke very softly to Newsday, "Everybody is all broken up. How do you deal with something like this? My wife is crying.

"If he was involved in anything stupid, we would know this was coming. But 15 years old?

"This is bad. This is really, really, really bad.

"A 15-year-old boy who had the dream and vision KK had, got cut down. At 15 years old. I'm not even going to see him become a father, to know what kind of father he would have turned out to be, because somebody was trigger-happy and decided to cut him down."

He urged people to keep their children close, saying that while they had tried to keep Kevin close, his death had happened in a split second.

Spiritual Shouter Baptist pastor Richard Glaud, a relative of Kevin, urged people to change their ways, asking "What's wrong with our young men?"

He lamented cases of young men watching "cut-eye" at drivers passing on their street, and urged people to instead turn to God. He said some parents haven't put anything in their children's brains so the children instead put their faith in guns.

Kevin was buried at the Carenage cemetery.