MOTHER TRIES TO SET SON’S BODY ON FIRE

A Cocorite mother was stopped yesterday from torching the body of her son, Mark “Markie Boy” Thompson, 33, whose bullet-riddled body was discovered not too far from his home yesterday morning.
Sandra Thompson, on hearing her son’s body was in some bushes a two-minute walk from her home, left and went to Peake’s gas station to buy gasoline.
Residents said the woman left her home at Freedom Street, Cocorite, fuming, saying she was going to get the gasoline to burn his body.
Some time later Thompson returned with a new canister filled with gasoline and a box of matches.
“Where him? I going and burn he body and call that George,” the woman was heard saying as she made her way to where her son’s decomposing body lay, near a bamboo patch on an incline.
But Thompson was ordered to stop by police officers on the scene and a man, later identified as another of her sons, stopped her and took the gasoline from her and carried her away from the scene.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian at her home hours later, Thompson said she wanted to burn her son’s body and give his ashes to his friends to share.
“When you die is to bury and is for the living to carry. I was going and burn him and share his ashes for all his friends and call it George,” Thompson said, adding her son’s spirit is now with the Lord but it was only his body that remained.
“When yuh son kill people you didn’t cry, don’t cry now,” one resident was overheard saying after Thompson was seen crying at the scene of the murder.
According to police reports, Thompson was last seen alive on Friday evening. Residents reportedly heard gunshots in the area around 10 pm but thought nothing of it.
Relatives made a missing person report to the St James Police Station on Sunday and it was not until yesterday around 8 am that a man heading to work discovered the body and notified the police. Relatives said they were notified around 10 am that Thompson was killed.
Police said Thompson was believed to have been responsible for several murders in the Cocorite area but never arrested him due to a lack of evidence.
Homicide officers are calling on anyone who “might have been afraid to come forward before” to do so now in the hope they can solve the murders in which Thompson was the suspect.
Police said Thompson was wounded in a police shootout several years ago and had been due to appear in court yesterday in a case of possession of a firearm and shooting at police.
Speaking with the media at the crime scene, a female relative of Thompson said the father of three had been receiving disability grants after he was shot.
She added that from the beginning of the year Thompson had been receiving death threats.
She added Thompson walked with a limp and suggestions that he was responsible for several murders did not seem likely.
However, residents, who did not want to be identified, all expressed relief that Thompson, who they nicknamed “John Wick”, was dead. One woman said she now felt safe enough to send her child to Thompson’s mother’s pre-school, Sweet Jesus Pre-School, as he was now dead.