Minister at Savanna’s funeral appeals to young people to slow down

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

The of­fi­ci­at­ing min­is­ter at the fu­ner­al of Diego Mar­tin mur­der vic­tim Sa­van­na Dy­er ap­pealed to young peo­ple to slow down and be wary of peo­ple who have noth­ing to con­tribute to their lives or well-be­ing.

Bish­op An­drew John, who de­liv­ered the ser­mon at Dy­er’s fu­ner­al at the West End Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship Church, Diego Mar­tin, yes­ter­day morn­ing, said while he un­der­stood the im­pul­sive, fast-paced ac­tiv­i­ties of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with youth, life was not “run­ning away” and there would be enough time to en­joy all that the world had to of­fer.

“The word for to­day is slow ... slow down. Where are you go­ing? Life is not run­ning away from you,” he said

“I can­not blame you for it be­cause I my­self felt that way too. The things I did were so fool­ish when I was young, so I can’t blame you for it be­cause I passed through it when I was young but I can ad­vise you to slow down.”

John urged mourn­ers to leave be­hind peo­ple who were harm­ful to their health and de­vel­op­ment. De­scrib­ing such peo­ple as par­a­sites, he said there was noth­ing to gain from hav­ing such peo­ple around and they could cause more harm than good.

“There are some peo­ple who are in your life they just suck you and kill you. Don’t let them suck you dry when you know they have noth­ing to give you,” he said.

“Get rid of the waste in your life, there’s some things you don’t need, and there’s some peo­ple you just don’t need in your space.”

John al­so lament­ed the spate of crime in T&T, not­ing that while each coun­try had its fair share of prob­lems the dis­re­gard shown by crim­i­nals was un­ac­cept­able.

He re­called a re­cent en­counter with a gun­man who ap­proached him while he was dri­ving. John said he was pre­pared to knock down the would-be at­tack­er if the sit­u­a­tion had es­ca­lat­ed.

“My car be­came my weapon be­cause I told my­self it’s not one that’s go­ing to die here to­day, it’s two of us that is go­ing to die here to­day.

“I just lunged at him with the car and he threw him­self out of the way with the gun giv­ing me enough time to go on my way,” he said.

“I nev­er catered for some­thing like that. Even as we sit here to­day in this cel­e­bra­tion of life, we nev­er catered for any­thing like this, un­for­tu­nate­ly it hap­pens not just to her but to many peo­ple and there­fore we must al­ways be alert.”

Dy­er’s body was dumped in an aban­doned lot of land on Xeres Road, Carlsen Field, on June 14. An au­top­sy con­clud­ed that she died from a sin­gle gun­shot wound to her head.

On June 21, Laven­tille se­cu­ri­ty guard Kib­we Wells was charged with her mur­der. A sec­ond man who was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der was sent to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal for as­sess­ment.

Po­lice sources con­firmed that the man was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day and charged by po­lice that af­ter­noon. He was ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a mag­is­trate yes­ter­day. Dy­er’s mur­der prompt­ed shock and out­rage on so­cial me­dia with many peo­ple call­ing for jus­tice and an end to crimes against women.

At her fu­ner­al, friends and rel­a­tives wore t-shirts and dec­o­ra­tive but­tons with her pho­to­graph. Among the mourn­ers was for­mer Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox who said she knew Dy­er as an af­fec­tion­ate young woman and felt the need to pay her re­spects.

“When­ev­er she saw me she would give me a hug and a kiss, that’s to tell you the per­son­al­i­ty and I’m so sor­ry that she had to have such a grue­some death,” Cox said.

“This is se­ri­ous and we need to look in­ward­ly as a so­ci­ety...I mean what type of chil­dren are we rais­ing?”

Fol­low­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice, the body was tak­en to the Long Cir­cu­lar Cre­ma­to­ri­um for cre­ma­tion.