New Twist | Suspected father found in Ochi
May 31, 2019Derrick King, whose son went missing 17 years ago, is confirmed to be alive and well in St Ann.
He could help to solve a massively complex puzzle that resurfaced in these pages this week.
There is speculation that he is perhaps the father of a 23-year-old man, Junior Paige, who, for several years, has been trying to find his father.
Paige said the woman he grew up calling mother, Marva McCarthy, never answered questions he posed about his father’s identity and whereabouts.
Now that King has surfaced as a possibility, Paige told The Beacon: “I would love to meet him.” He further said he is willing to have a DNA test done.
One of King’s close relatives does not think King would be reluctant to participate in the DNA process. However, it is not clear how the process would be funded.
The DNA test would help to determine two main things: If King is the father Paige has been trying to find – for years, and if Paige is King’s son who disappeared 17 years ago.
THE DISAPPEARANCE
King had a son with businesswoman Janet Hardie about 22 years ago in St Ann. They named the boy Rojay King.
On a Sunday afternoon – 10 March 2002, Rojay, who was five years old, went to Roaring River Beach in St Ann with his mother, who was celebrating her birthday.
The mother, in an interview with The Beacon last year, recalled that, while at the beach, she stepped away briefly from the boy to answer a telephone call.
She then realized that the boy was missing.
The child’s father, at the time, was in the United States.
He was among persons who, at one point, was suspected to have taken the child indirectly.
However, the mother, in an interview last year, expressed doubt that the father was involved.
She, at the time, told The Beacon: “I broke up with him (the father) when I was five months pregnant. He didn’t have any bond with the child; and you would not take a child with whom you had no bond. Persons would say they suspected him, but I never suspected him.”
There is no known public record of the father being involved in the search for his son, Rojay, but that obviously doesn’t mean he was not searching.
However, the mother spent 17 tough years searching publicly, hoping to find closure.
Her search ended this week when she was murdered during a domestic dispute at her matrimonial home at Tower Isles in St Mary – not far from Ocho Rios in her native St Ann.
In April last year, however, the mother met Paige in Kingston, thinking that Paige is probably the adult version of her son who disappeared at the beach.
The mother’s assumption was hinged to the fact that Paige appeared in the media, declaring that he never had a birth certificate, he never heard about his father, and he is not able to find any record of him attending school prior to age seven. Paige arguably also resembles the mother’s child – King, who went missing from the beach.
The mother and Paige eventually decided to settle the matter with a DNA test.
The mother however pulled out of the plans partly because Paige’s relatives in Kingston became upset after they learnt about the impending DNA.
Paige this week told The Beacon that members of his family recently confessed that the woman he called mother for years was not his real mother.
By Horace Mills, Journalist
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