Scholarship winner Zhara-Marie Henry had wanted her father to accompany her on her first day at Glenmuir High School in Clarendon when the new school year begins next week. Instead, she will have to ask her mother or go alone.

Her father, Geddes Henry, a taxi operator, was shot and killed last Tuesday, by two gunmen posing as passengers. Police reports indicated that his body was discovered in Sandy Bay, Clarendon.

"Daddy didn't even get to see me try on my uniform," an emotional Zhara said yesterday.

The aspiring attorney-at-law and her family were still celebrating the J.A.G. Smith scholarship she had won for her performance in the recent Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) when the news struck like a bombshell.

Posing as passengers

Reports from the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) are that while driving his Toyota Corolla motor car along the main road in Mineral Heights, Clarendon, he was stopped by two men posing as passengers.

On reaching Sandy Bay, he was ordered from the vehicle by the armed men and then shot. This has shattered the 12-year-old's wish of walking beside her father on the first day of school.

When the scholarship was announced, Henry had told The Gleaner "the scholarship would be clogging a big hole in the family's budget".

An auto-mechanic by profession, Henry said Zhara was the only one of his four children to be awarded a scholarship.

Her mother, Dianne Henry, said Zhara had been working hard in school since she was six at Mineral Heights Primary, Clarendon.

Zhara took the opportunity of an interview with The Gleaner in July to advise students preparing for GSAT to remain focused and determined. Yesterday, she seemed a shadow of that positive tween.

- Shernette Gillispie