New year brings grief to St Ann family New year brings grief TO - Mother wishes she could turn back the hands of time

Verona White keeps replaying a voice message her son sent her on New Year's Day - 'Happy New Year, Mommy, I love you so much'.

It turns out that those are the last words the 55-year-old will ever hear from her boy, Delroy Trowers, 23, who was killed one day after.

The police reports are that about 6:30 p.m. last Saturday, January 2, Trowers was travelling in a taxi to his Lower Buxton, St Ann, home when an argument allegedly developed between him and the driver. The argument continued until Trowers got to his stop. It was said that Trowers allegedly attacked the driver with a knife, who shot him. He was then transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead

The distraught mother said that she is still in a state of disbelief. Like many persons around the world, White was eager to see the back of a hellish 2020, and looked ahead to 2021 with great optimism. Heartbreak was furthest from her mind.

"I wish I could turn back the hands of time because I wasn't looking to hear this news about my son," said White who migrated to the US in 2013.

Harboured thoughts

"I hope this year would be better because I had plans for my children. I was hoping to get them to come over and spend time with me until the filing come through," she added.

When White left Jamaica, Trowers was 16. She last saw him in 2017 when she visited. This has made the pain even greater as she harboured thoughts of seeing him and her other children this year.

"Me nuh sleep a night time. Is like me in a this nightmare and me want to wake and can't," she told THE STAR.

White, a mother of eight, said her relationship with Trowers, her sixth child, was special.

"Me and me son have the best relationship, I don't know if it is because him resemble me the most. He was the type of son to just see me and hug me and say, 'Mommy, you know me love you'," the grieving mother said

Trowers attended Lower Buxton All-Age and then Brown's Town High. He had an interest in furniture-making and was taught the trade by a community member.

"My son had a bright future," she said of Trowers, who was the third of her four boys. "Him was planning to start a business where he would build and sell furniture. Him even buy $60,000 worth of tools to start because he was just very hard-working."

Likewise, Trowers's elder sister, Sanya Trowers, said that her brother was ambitious and dependable.

"He was a hard-working person and anything you ask him to do you can count on him to get it done," she said. "If me call him to come do something for me in Trelawny, where I live, and him nuh have no fare, him a guh walk and beg it to come. Right now me can't sleep in my house because every time I go in the living room, I just see my brother laying down in the bed he used to sleep when he was living with me," she said. The Brown's Town police are probing the incident.