Shereden Edwards, the principal of Gomea Methodist Primary School, said she ‘felt it to her core’ when she learned about Calbert Nero’s death, a graduate teacher who had joined the staff in October 2021.
Calbert Nero’s death is shrouded in mystery and has shocked the community. According to information collected, Nero’s body was discovered in a sewer at the base of a six-foot retaining wall at the Gomea community centre and playing field last Sunday night.
Edwards told the St Vincent Times last Wednesday that Nero was a really helpful teacher who was always giving advice or an opinion on how things should be.
“He just grew into us, and he did many things; he was in charge of the tuck shop, the money deposits, and handling the Thirsty Water Programme,” Edwards stated.
Nero, according to Edwards, was a pleasant person who was on the management team, and his death impacted her and the entire staff deeply.
“To be honest, I felt it at my core because the last thing he said to me on Friday was, Miss, we have some money we need to deposit, and I was saying to him, We can’t deposit yet. We have the staff dinner, so after that event, I was looking forward to him coming back to do the deposits and so on. When I heard Mr. Nero pass, from there on, my spirit was down because Mr. Nero was like, I tell you, the bellringer; he was the gentleman on staff that we needed for a lot of stuff.”
“We all miss him; we would look for the short gentleman coming down the slight incline on mornings. And one of our teachers was saying to me on Wednesday morning, We are looking for the short gentleman; come down the road; he is no more’ no more. So Mr. Nero would truly be missed.”
Edwards stated that she had never had the feeling or heard that Nero was in any kind of conflict with anyone.
“I never knew him to be in any confrontation. He would speak to me about many things, but I never got that impression. I know on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday he would play dominoes, but Nero would be at school on Monday. He would not miss a Monday school and was not late; he was a good person, and honestly, I miss him.”
Edwards said Nero went beyond teaching grade five students; he also coached children in grade six for CPEA. “Nero did math classes and called himself the math specialist.”
Fun person
“He would always come and say, Miss, I’m going to get my Janumet; that’s a tablet. And then he would say, If the client doesn’t have it, I have to go and buy it. And I would say, Mr. Nero, nothing is wrong with you buying your sugar tablet. And he would say, Well, miss, I could only buy this amount, and there is a phrase he would say, ‘they must stop it’. To me, if somebody is out of line, they need to stop it, so he was really a fun person.”.
Nero, sometimes referred to as ‘Pepper,’ was reportedly present at the community centre engaging in a game of dominoes on Sunday, simultaneously attending a sports and entertainment event occurring at the playing field.
The St Vincent Times understands that at some point in the evening, he proceeded to urinate in a drain that slopes downward and connects the structure to a drain below. This drain is separated by a six-foot-high wall and is located next to the public road.
There is no record of the events that occurred during or after Nero when to urinate. There is widespread speculation that he stumbled and suffered a neck fracture after falling off the wall.
Reports are that a driver saw an individual lying at the base of the drain between the retaining wall, about at midnight. The driver’s curiosity piqued, prompting them to return to the location of the corpse. The authorities were contacted. One of Nero’s shoes it is said was found about 10 feet away from his body.
The St Vincent Times learned that Nero’s postmortem test revealed a one-inch bruise on his wrist and an injury near the back of his skull. However, it was concluded that his neck was not broken, additionally, there were no additional physical injuries seen on Nero’s body that would be compatible with falling down a step-down drain of around 2-3 feet in width from a height of six feet.
During an interview with the St Vincent Times last Wednesday, a man at the community centre said that he and Nero were together at a shop close to his residence that day. Nero then instructed him to go to another shop in the vicinity to buy beers. He said that he later overheard others announcing the demise of ‘Pepper’.
Residents in the vicinity have raised concerns about why a corpse that had been exposed to the public for an extended period of time went unnoticed, despite the presence of a significant number of people attending a public sporting and entertainment event at the Gomea community centre and playing field.
