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A 15 Year Old Cruelly Killed By His Peer
posted (June 7, 2010)
Fifteen year old Shaquille Bennett was supposed to be marching up with his graduating class this coming Saturday, but instead the teenaged student of Independence High School is lying at the City's morgue. Bennett was badly beaten on Friday night with a baseball bat, leaving him with a fractured skull. He was transported to the KHMH where doctors gave him a 5 percent chance of living. Today Monica Bodden caught up with Shaquille's mother, Marlie Bennett who said she was at home when she got the news that her son had been attacked.

Marlie Bennett, Mother
"He left out, he was going out and I was sitting down and then I heard a boy, one of our we friend come and he said, 'Where is Shaquille,' and I tell him Shaquille went out. He said, 'Does he have a phone?' I tell him yes and I ask him why, he said some boy chase Shaquille just now off of the main. So I called my husband because he was at work and when I called him he said he had no vehicle so I left out and sent two of my daughters ahead on the bicycle. I left out to go and see what happened right, because he told us the direction that he ran. And when we left out, I reach across the field and my other daughter called me and she said mommy go to the hospital because Jamar stopped by and I guess he take Shaquille to the hospital. I saw Shaquille lying right and then he told me what happen that these little boys attacked him right and he named the boys out for me and then he said, but mommy I'm coming back, I'm coming back for them and I tell him don't worry babe, I'll take you to the doctor and everything will be ok, right. So we called the doctor and everything and whatever happen they transfer us to Dangriga and then they transfer us here and I just spoke to the doctor and the doctor tell me he is ninety five percent that he won't make it, but I am holding on to the five."

That 5 percent of hope for her 15 year old son was taken away while doing that interview. Doctors called Bennett inside the hospital to inform her that Shaquille didn't make it.

Marlie Bennett
"The doctor just called me while I was interviewing and then he tells me that my son die at 10:30."

Monica Bodden, 7News
"What was Shaquille's condition?"

Marlie Bennett
"From Shaquille reach here, he had a crack in the skull, the base of his skull, the damages and the brains was just swelling, and it wasn't getting any better."

Monica Bodden
"He was beaten by 5 students of the same school?"

Marlie Bennett
"Well I don't really know if all of them are students of the same school but I think majority of them were. Yesterday I spoke to the police and he told me they had six of them detained, so I don't know after that what happened. Well I just want whatever justice they have to give to me and my son. Give me the fullest, the fullest, fullest what you could find. Because I could do something of my own right, but I serve God, I hold everything that God promises me and I want the parent to know that I am in this condition right now, this situation that I am in, only the strength of God is holding me up and I am praying for the parent and the children because I know God and I ask them to please, please always make sure you take care of your kid because if they get in the shoe I am in right now, I don't know what they will do. I always say that I would never get on the TV and say my son don't do this and my son don't do that because I don't know what my son do, but Shaquille, from PG to wherever know that Shaquille is not the type of person that will annoy anybody."

An official police report says that on Friday night between 7:00 and 7:30, six young boys chased Bennett through the in the Sundown Trail Area of Independence Village. They stoned him and when he got near the Adventist School Area on Church Street, Independence Village he fell down. That's when one of the young men - only 15 years old - struck him with an Aluminum baseball bat on the head. He was taken to the Independence poly-clinic, where he had a swollen left eye, and bleeding from his nose & ears. Bennett was taken to the KHMH in a serious condition where - as you saw in our story - he died at 10:30am this morning. And this afternoon at 4:00, police formally arrested and charged the 15 year old who wielded the bat for Murder.

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