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Upon seeing the news team yesterday, Sonia Black broke down in tears. Her daughter Kadine Sewell offered words of comfort but she too was grief stricken. Black and Sewell are the mother and sister of 30-year-old Okeve Sewell, who was last Thursday evening stabbed and beaten to death by an angry mob after he was accused of splashing a pedestrian with his vehicle on Ricketts Crescent.

Black said she saw her son less than two hours before he met his demise when he came home to drop off a parcel of dog food.

Okeve, who worked as a forklift operator, was killed less than five minutes away from his Chisholm Avenue home.

"He told me that he was going to park the company vehicle and go back to pick up his car after which he would have met his sister in Half-Way Tree. I didn't see him come back but because my daughter never reach home either, I thought he was still waiting on her," she said.

She said that about an hour later, a family friend came to tell her that he had heard a rumour that Okeve was killed on Ricketts Crescent.

"I told him I didn't hear anything like that but when mi start call his phone and he wasn't answering, mi start think all type of things. Same time mi see the (police) radio car drive up and same time mi know say something really wrong with mi son," she said.

Her worst fears

Black said the police did not immediately tell her that her son had been killed but said that they wanted someone to pick up his vehicle. She gave them Kadine's cellular number.

Kadine told THE STAR that she got a bad feeling when she saw several missed calls from a 'strange' number on her phone and her worst fears were confirmed after answering.

"When the phone ring again it was somebody from our home and I heard a lot of noise and crying in the background and for some reason the first thing come out a mi mouth was 'what happen to Okeve?'. Is like mi bredda just flashed before mi," she said.

Kadine said the next few minutes were a blur as she tried to process the devastating news.

"The police didn't want to confirm Okeve's death in front of mummy. One of them told me that I needed to come and pick up the car and while we were on our way there, I was told that I needed to go by Tranquillity Funeral Home. When mi reach, mi couldn't even go in the funeral home," she said with tears streaming down her face.

Describing her little brother as a hard-working and family-oriented individual, she said that he did not deserve to die in such a cruel manner.

"Mi hear say when him make the splash, him stop and come out and say 'Sorry brogad' and same time the youth drape him up and him drape up back the bwoy. A next youth come stab him inna him back and then the whole a dem come and gang him," she said.

The St Andrew South police have listed a man known as 'Andre', or 'Conman' as a person of interest in the incident. They are encouraging him to turn himself over to the Hunts Bay police immediately for questioning.