Toni-Ann's mother appeals for help in finding killer

The Jamaican mother of a seven-year-old girl shot dead along with her father in a London bedsit, made an emotional appeal for help in solving her murder.

Toni-Ann Byfield and her father, Bertram, were killed on Sunday a day before the seven-year-old was to begin primary school. Police believe Toni-Ann was murdered because she saw her father’s killer.

“Whoever did this left my sons without a sister and a father,” Toni-Ann’s mother, Rosalyn Christine Richards said during a news conference with her lawyer and British police in Jamaica yesterday. “I beg anyone who knows anything to come forward to the police.”

Toni-Ann was shot once in the back, apparently after witnessing her father’s killing. Mr Byfield, a Briton raised in Jamaica, served nine years in a British prison for dealing crack cocaine. A year ago, he survived a similar shooting.

Police detained a 23-year-old man in connection with the deaths but later released him on bail. He is being held on an alleged immigration violation.

Ms Richards, in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday at her blue, run-down concrete house in western Kingston, lashed out at authorities for the death of her daughter, who had been under the care of Birmingham City Council social services.

She blamed UK social services for not keeping better track of Toni-Ann.

At yesterday’s news conference Ms Richards said her daughter left Jamaica “for a better life” and was planning on coming back to Jamaica.

“The last words she said to me over the phone was, ‘Mummy, I’m coming to Jamaica in December’,” Ms Richards said, holding back tears. “What could a seven-year-old girl have to done to someone to be murdered that way?

“If Toni-Ann was with me she would still be alive,” she added. “My intention was for Toni-Ann to come back.”