Murdered sisters and grandmother laid to rest

Christopher McFarlane was beside himself with grief yesterday as he lay face down between the coffins of his two murdered children, with his own mother to his left.

Mourners said goodbye to 81-year-old Icyline McFarlane and her two granddaughters, Christina, 10, and Michayne, six, who were murdered in a home invasion in Tryall Heights on Sunday, November 22. Sources report that the senior citizen was made to kneel and was shot dead before the killers trained their weapons on Christina and Michayne.

Sunday’s ceremony at Perry’s Funeral Home in Spanish Town, St Catherine, was awash with grief as mourners recalled the triple tragedy.

Not pleased

McFarlane was inconsolable as relatives and friends watched helplessly. Councillor Keisha Lewis, who represents the Lauriston division, used the funeral to charge the Jamaican society to hunt down the killers and bring them to justice.

“I am not pleased with what I see here today, as there are two children and a grandmother here in their caskets,” she said. “... This can’t be the work of one person.”

A representative of Spanish Town Primary, where the children attended, decried the targeting of the sisters, adding that Michayne had all the hallmarks of leadership. The bodies were later interred at Meadowrest Memorial Gardens in St Catherine.

The brutality of the attack is unusual in Tryall Heights, invoking wrath and sorrow in its aftermath for seasoned crime-fighters like Assistant Commissioner of Police Gary Griffiths.

The head of the police Area Five, who is a father himself, said he was personally devastated by the Tryall Heights bloodbath.

“It is really gruesome. I have been to many scenes, but this one touches me to the core,” he had said the day after the killing.