DREAMED OF RESCUING HIS FAMILY FROM POVERTY…EMERGING SOCCER STAR OMAR LAING, 18, SLAIN BY GUNMEN IN KINGSTON!

By Asha Wilks/Gleaner Writer—

Nicholas Nunes/Photographer Asharia Grant (left), a friend, comforts Melorine Gizat, the mother of Omar Laing, as residents of Luke Lane, Kingston, mourn the loss of the 18-year-old footballer on Sunday. Laing was fatally shot on Charles Street last Friday.

Melorine Gizart walked along Luke Lane on Sunday in her son’s football gear, even in his socks and boots, as if seeking to summon from the dead 18-year-old football prodigy Omar Laing, who was killed by gunmen on Friday.

Meanwhile, Laing’s one-year-old daughter, oblivious of her father’s death, continues to hunt for him in the crowds of mourners that swelled outside the home and other hangout spots.

The wailing of a distraught mother is a familiar soundtrack in crime-plagued west Kingston, with Charles Street the site of two shooting deaths in the last eight days. But Gizart’s guttural cries Sunday evoked particular distress because Laing was believed to be on the cusp of greatness.

Laing, who made his debut in grade nine while playing for St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS), was set to travel with Jamaica Premier League team Cavalier to the 2022 Caribbean Club Championship in the Dominican Republic next month.

Like many sons in inner-city Jamaica, Laing had sought to give his mother hope that he would leverage his opportunity to lift the family – including his 15-year-old brother and a sister who turned 10 on Sunday – out of poverty.

“Mommy, mi a make you rich, you know, mi a make you rich. No worry yourself. If ball no work fi mi, mi a go look a work,” Gizart recalled of her son’s reassurance and loyalty to family.

But those lofty dreams died as she clutched her son in anguish on his birthday, watching as the last flicker of life left his body.

She had heard the chilling gunshots ringing out Friday afternoon and instinctively ran out on to Charles Street, where she found her firstborn lying in the road.

“When mi look, mi turn over mi baby. Mi baby no have no eye, mi baby teeth gone. Only the ball lef’ inna him eye,” she exclaimed, on the brink of tears, in a Gleaner interview.

Gizart disclosed that scouts from Jamaica College, St George’s College, and Kingston College had signaled an interest in wooing Laing from STATHS, but her son, she said, preferred to remain there.

“Me can’t even bawl because him don’t like when mi cry,” said the 34-year-old mother, who recounted the numerous times she went hungry to ensure that her three children were well fed and cared for.

Phillip Williams, coach of STATHS’s football team, said that Laing had always shown promise and was on a trajectory to becoming a superstar. The teenager had shown great potential representing the school at the Under-16 level and later in the ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup 2021-22 season, emerging as the top goal scorer.

He had already begun gearing up for the 2022-23 season in his final year of schoolboy football, said Williams.

“It really caught us offguard … . [It’s] one that we cannot digest,” Williams said of the news of Laing’s murder.

Cavalier head coach Rudolph Speid, who spoke with The Gleaner hours before the team’s 2-0 loss to Humble Lions FC in the Jamaica Premier League on Sunday, said that Laing’s death was a hard pill to swallow.

Speid disclosed that counselling sessions were organised for Cavalier players on Saturday.

“I don’t even know how we’ll get over it.

“He’s just 18, so [this] would have been a big boost for him,” he said of the potential of Laing’s success.