It was early on New Year’s Day — the calendar had already flipped from 2009 to 2010, and Kemar Lawrence was back home. He had just returned to Kingston, Jamaica following a difficult few months in the Vancouver Whitecaps residential academy. His family had moved out of the city and into the countryside a couple of years before, in part to escape the violence that has long marred the capital. But Lawrence, then 17 and coming off of a desperately homesick stint in Canada, didn’t want to ring in the New Year in rural St. Thomas Parish. He wanted to celebrate in Kingston, where he had lived until he was 15. He watched the fireworks over the city with some friends, then returned to his old neighborhood, where he had arranged to stay with a relative.



Right as he pulled up at the gate to the house, Lawrence saw his cousin Joel turn the corner. Whenever he comes home from abroad, Lawrence likes to bring a few gifts back with him. This time, he’d packed a...