Mesha-Gaye Tomlin, a student of The Queen's School, who was killed during a robbery on March 16, 2005. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

The Sunday Gleaner continues its series looking at the lives of young Jamaicans killed violently and the potential contributions they would have made to society.

JUST BEFORE her death in 2005, 18-year-old Mesha-Gaye Tomlin was writing a speech to be presented as part of her sociology class in lower-sixth form at The Queen's School in St Andrew.

The speech was to look at how youth could drive the development of Jamaica.

"It was ironic," Alicia Murdock says as she remembers her younger sister who was effervescent about serving Jamaica and hoped one day to become a lawyer.

"She was so talkative and always into the whole politics," Murdock recalls.

"She was a driven person and she was hoping that by the time I got into college, she would be working to put me through school," Murdock tells The Sunday Gleaner.

Excerpts from her speech

Excerpts from the budding politician's speech were used by then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, Murdock recalls, in a speech he delivered to Parliament following her death in 2005.

The teen was robbed and murdered on her way home from school one afternoon in March of 2005 by two men who were posing as passengers in the route taxi in which she was travelling.

They stabbed her in the side as she resisted their demand to hand over her bag and cellular phone.

"Some people just take life as a trivial thing, like it's not worth much more than cellphone and makes you wonder how they could think that," Murdock reflects.

Suffering continues

One of the men allegedly involved in Tomlin's death was killed by the police, but whether he was caught or not means nothing to Murdock.

"If he suffers it doesn't end my suffering," she says.

Murdock is now the same age Tomlin was when she was murdered, 18. It's been nearly impossible for her to forget the sequence of events before Tomlin was murdered.

"The day before her death we were just playing around and doing some mock interviews," Murdock recalls.

"The two of us were alone in the house and we were just playing and we did a number of topics.

"I remember at one time I was Beenie Man and she was Bounty Killer," she laughs.

"And one point she was the politician and the hotshot lawyer and stuff like that," Murdock laughs again as she remembers.

"She was happy person, a very happy person," Murdock adds. "We all have our struggles and that never stopped her," she says.

Tomlin's murder caused the family to change some of its practices and to become more vigilant about its safety, though Murdock refuses to allow the crime situation to prevent her from pursuing her dreams.

Ambitions

She wants to become a geographer and a diplomat someday, hopefully becoming the first female secretary general of the United Nations.

The upper-sixth form student, who attends the Wolmer's High School for Girls, is hoping to attend university this summer and has already applied to two local universities and another in the United States.

Her mother, Irene Montague, is hoping desperately that she will be accepted by the university in the United States. The move, she believes, will keep her only remaining child away from the clutches of bloodthirsty criminals.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com