Her son is the first in the list of Bermuda’s 33 unsolved murders across 20 years.

For Marsha Jones, mother of shooting victim Shaundae Jones, the silence hanging over so many unresolved cases is a collective indictment.

“It’s an awful, awful predicament to be in,” Ms Jones said.

“These young men that are killing each other — they say Black lives matter? It doesn’t matter to each other. We have to start loving each other.

“We are losing our young men left, right, centre. Thirty-three of us that nobody knows what happened? It’s unreal.”

Speaking two decades after her only son was murdered at age 20, Ms Jones said: “We can’t keep on like this. It’s continuing on and on. These people out here killing people, they feel invincible.

“They feel like they can get away with it. And they are getting away with it. They seem to be so organised that they know they can do this around people and know they are not going to talk.”

Time has done little to lessen her daily grief for her son, she told The Royal Gazette.

“My body seems to recognise the pain that April brings with it. This year was even worse. The anxiety was worse than normal. And I could recognise why I was feeling that way.”

Each year, after April 27, the anniversary marking when her son was shot at point-blank range in a car pulling away from the Club Malabar nightclub in Dockyard, Ms Jones gradually “starts relaxing” as the date recedes.

As difficult as she finds her son’s birthday of January 16, the date of Shaundae’s murder hurts more deeply — and although Ms Jones said she had come “a long way” in the 20 years since, the loss of her son and the legacy he could have given her is “a void that can’t be fixed, and it’s tough”.

Twenty years on, she said those involved in her son’s murder and the people harbouring key information are now adults, possibly parents.

“You would not want to be in this situation where you lose a child or grandchild to murder, and nobody is talking,” she said.

“They can’t come out and shoot everybody. I think the law should protect people who are witnesses and make them feel safe, so they can come forward. This can’t go on like this.

“As long as people are not talking and nobody’s saying anything, nothing is happening, and 33 families are still living this nightmare every day.

“No, it’s not going to bring them back. But at least it gives you some closure that somebody is being held responsible for your loved one dying.”

She added: “These people have been executed. It’s not right for you to go along with life, put it in the back of your head, act like you’re not thinking about it, that it was a long time ago, that I’m getting on with my life.

“Marsha is here trying to get on with my life, and these other 32 families. If somebody could please help these families out, including mine …”

Ms Jones’s final memory of Shaundae is watching her son wave from his friend’s car as they set out for that evening.

She cherishes that she happened to come home from a night out, adding she had felt uneasy about Shaundae socialising after he had recently testified in a murder trial.

She had “a phobia because of the recent activity” that her son would go to the popular nightspot in Dockyard.

Woken in the early hours by her phone, Ms Jones’s fears were confirmed as she heard her son’s girlfriend screaming that Shaundae had been shot.

Gun violence was so rare in Bermuda 20 years ago, she struggled to understand what she was being told.

She said she found it ominous as she passed police cars on her way to the hospital, with emergency lights flashing but no sirens.

As someone who had worked in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Ms Jones knew the room she and her boyfriend of the time were ushered into was a place used to break the worst possible news to families.

She fell to her hands and knees as nurses struggled to explain that Shaundae was dead — and “passed out” after screaming helplessly for her lifeless son to wake up.

In the years of gun violence and murders since, Ms Jones has brought a degree of comfort to others reckoning with the unthinkable.

“Every time I hear of somebody losing their child, I know the experience they are going to step by step go through, and it’s horrific.”

She became “very, very close” with Shahidah Abdur-Rahim, the mother of Aquil Richardson, 30, who was shot dead on Boxing Day, 2007.

Mr Richardson had been in the car with Shaundae when he was murdered.

Sometimes she has found helping other families to be a positive experience. On other occasions, it had proved overwhelming.

“If I can be of help, I will,” Ms Jones said. “But sometimes it has gotten me in some dark places.”

After doing her best as a parent, putting her son through school and then college, she said she wrestled with impossible questions: “How did we get here? You ask yourself that. Where did I go wrong? Why me?”

Ms Jones added: “I thought I had all my ducks in a row. But the enemy is still out there.”

She said she deplored the fatalism of gang culture, the youth of those taking part, the sense of young men caught in “this image you have to portray”, and the youth of victims such as her son.

“These are human beings. Somebody’s child, somebody’s daddy or brother. It’s just not right; there’s more to life than this. To be living on the edge, wondering who you can take out next? Come on.

“If we start working together and talking, maybe we will slow down this horrific situation Bermuda has got itself into.”

Ms Jones said she hoped to “shake somebody’s thoughts, mind, conscience — we’re all born with a conscience”.

“You look at your loved one, your baby; you want the best for them.

“Do the right thing and help somebody else who was not as fortunate, and God will bless you.”