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Courtney Menzies today spoke with Kimani Barrow - 24 hours after she flew in from the US to bury her son. She asked to appear off camera - but she gave a riveting account of the deep wound of loss:

Kimani Barrow was in the US on Wednesday night when she got a call from her daughter telling her that her son had just been killed.

James was a Coast Guard officer, so Barrow never once thought he'd be unsafe in the city - and especially in his own home. But that is exactly where he had been killed, and she said she's still in shock.

Voice of: Kimani Barrow, Mother of Deceased
"My son is a Coast Guard so I always thought maybe he would get hurt on the sea or maybe going on the road because he travels a lot because of his athleticism, he's an athlete, he plays football, apart from being a Coast Guard, he's a football player."

Courtney Menzies:
"Did Charles ever tell you at any point that he felt he had to fear for his life?"

Voice of: Kimani Barrow, Mother of Deceased
"No, and me and Charles, CJ as everybody knows him as, we're peas in a pod, if there was any fear, my son has his own property which has a house on it so he doesn't even have to live in the city per se so if he had any fear that someone was after him or that his life was in danger, I would have known that and he know he could have gone to Hattieville where his property is. So I'm really shocked about what happened and I am really really lost, I'm confused, because I raised my child, that specific child because he is a boy and the society of what our youths are heading into, mostly men, I try hard for him not to be on the streets, not to be a statistic of, to say go to jail, hurt someone, be in any robberies, any murders so I'm very shocked about what happened to him."

And yesterday the Commissioner of Police believed he was killed over a woman, and not because of his relation to Tanga James, which was one motive that had been speculated. But his mother said she believes it's more than that.

Voice of: Kimani Barrow, Mother of Deceased
"To be honest, I'm not saying that it's not about a girl or whatever, I think it's about a neighborhood on a whole, when you have a society that most young men are out here dealing with guns, drugs, stealing, robbery, and you raise a specific one in that area to be someone of good, someone that does good, it stems a jealousness on that person specifically because if he's not on the corner with them, smoking weed with them, drinking with them, doing what they do, it kind of builds up a jealousy on these young men so it could be, I will not say it's because of that but it could be all around jealousy, not only specifically because of one person."

But regardless of the motive, Barrow is now preparing to bury her only son - one that had often been lovingly called a "mommy's boy."

Voice of: Kimani Barrow, Mother of Deceased
"Who knows me, I'm a hairdresser, my customers will tell me he's a mommy's boy, whenever he finishes work, and people at Coast Guard could probably attest to that, I pick him up, I drop him off at work. Whenever everybody is eating Coast Guard food, I am leaving the customer to drop off his food specifically what he wants to eat and as I said, he's an athlete and he's a football player, that's what he did from the age of probably 5 until his death, he was supposed to go play ball Saturday right here, he's with so many team, he's an all around football player."

"To be honest, I've been a prayer warrior, I wake up for the past year and a half, just worshipping, doing my devotion every morning and I just have a sense of calmness right now, I don't have revenge in my heart, I just want to bury my son and lay him to rest and I can't say what I'll do from here future wise because my future is not what God, you know, I could say I'm doing something but God could have different plans for me but apart from burying my son, I have two daughters that I need to stay focused for."

We note that Barrow's brother was also murdered some years ago.