Cry for love?

Keshawn Bartlett would be alive today had he received the love he needed.

That was the consensus among many residents from Allen View, St. Thomas this evening as the dead body of the 21-year-old was being driven away in a Two Sons Funeral Home vehicle. His lifeless body was discovered hanging from a pear tree a few yards away from his family house sometime after three o’clock today.

It is alleged that the former Lester Vaughan Secondary student committed suicide.

The cries from Bartlett’s cousin, Sheldon Lemon, pierced the quiet as many huddled talking about the event. Then, speaking to Barbados TODAY, another cousin Rommell Lemon’s emotions switched from grief to anger as he charged that a lack of love was the real reason for Bartlett’s death.

Maintaining that he was a good young man, Rommell suggested that personal issues may explain why he may have taken his life. He said that having noticed something was not right with the deceased several days prior, he reached out to another relative of Bartlett’s to ask for help for him but it was not forthcoming. He noted that Bartlett was his third young male relative who died by suicide in the past few years

“He used to sit down and talk to me. He used to say, ‘they unfair me. Nobody don’t love me’. For me, I used to give him advice, that is the most I could give he. . . . People start to turn a blind eye and all of that there is what lead to this here now. The more he tell heself every time a different person turn away from he, you does start to believe you got the world pun your shoulders, nobody don’t really care, but it is not that nobody ain’t care,” Rommell claimed.

Sheldon was overcome with grief as he told Barbados TODAY of the horror of finding his little cousin dead. He too expressed strong feelings about a perceived lack of love and wondered if he could have done more to save Bartlett.

“Keshawn was very cool. In the latter stage I start to take care of him, and show him love and appreciation, that is all I could do. He just needed that care. I used to be telling the men don’t push he away, just show he that love, he gine come around. But I could only show he but if others ain’t showing he there ain’t nothing you could do about it,” he cried.

“Me and he was really close coming down this latter stage, I was really trying with he. I was trying. Every day I wanted to carry he down the road (Psychiatric Hospital) but I ain’t gine just snatch he up, I want he to say let we go Sammy. I would prefer he mother or father do that. I here destroyed,” Sheldon lamented.

The last person who reportedly saw Bartlett alive sometime after 9 this morning was Owen Webb. He recalled seeing the young man running into the bushy area where his body was later discovered in the later afternoon. This is after a verbal altercation between Bartlett and another man at the house where Webb was staying.

Webb explained that because Bartlett was essentially homeless, he would allow him to stay with him without any major issues. This morning, however, Bartlett unplugged a charger belonging to someone else and he and that person clashed. Webb said he spoke to Bartlett in a harsh tone and he ran into the bushes. Webb ran behind him but then stopped and decided to allow Bartlett to cool off, but several hours later he heard that he had died.

In retrospect, Webb regrets not following Bartlett and he recounted seeing tears on Bartlett’s face as his body lay dead after the rope was cut from the tree.

“I sad. I does give he anything. He does do anything for me. When I go to work he would go and collect my little daughter and bring she home. I blame myself to a certain extent because I get a little upset with he . . . I ain’t say it in no good tone. I feel that help crack he and he tell heself he ain’t got nobody.

“He should be living. All of we is family, he ain’t lack no food- nothing, he lacked love. He wanted love. To me he needed a father figure, he used to be ‘round me all the time. If I going town I would say, ‘Bartlett let we go town’. Then he tell heself this (incident) is the last straw, the last people that ‘round he that care for he, against he. They say the rope was there hang up for three days in the tree. He died crying,” Webb said in anguish holding his head.

Rommell implored young people who were struggling with depression to get help and stressed if he could have done more it would have been to reassure Bartlett that someone cared for him.

“Any time you know that you got a problem or you in a dark place there is always somebody that gine listen to you. There is always that one friend . . .that you can turn to and who will listen. When you in a dark place I want them to find that body and reason with them, there is always help. Different to sit down for three-four hours and bottling up things. . . it does stress you out. . . . What you got to do is find yourself and align yourself with people that gine keep your mind from there,” Rommell added.