A massive crowd turned up to view the body of the woman who brought extra cheer to her family and well-wishers when she won Mocha/Arcadia's 2003 queen pageant crown. With memories of her win still fresh, wailing grew louder when the coffin was placed in her grandma's yard and again when mourners filed past her body, attired in a pink dress, sash and her crown.

The one time queen looked as though she were asleep.

Many of her friends, colleagues, neighbours, villagers, relatives later turned up at the Mocha Arcadia Seventh Day Adventist Church where they jostled with others in a hot frenzy to get a glimpse of the beautiful Kenisha.

Her mother, Annette Wharton, 41, was overwhelmed with grief. She wept uncontrollably and every now and again she collapsed.

“Me only daughter, Kenisha gone now, who me go talk to now, let me touch my child, let hold her just once, I want to talk to her please,” cried the woman yesterday as she viewed the body of her daughter lying in a coffin surrounded by mourners.

Quite a few of Kenisha’s friends also collapsed when they saw her; others cried aloud, again expressing their dismay and grief.

Kenisha Baird, 19, of Lot 547 Housing Scheme Mocha Arcadia, East Bank Demerara, was killed on the night of Monday, June 7. She was alleged to have been brutally beaten by three women during a savage street brawl. A group of lawless residents reportedly formed a circle around her and her assailants, apparently to keep her from escaping.

A post mortem revealed that Kenisha died from cardiac arrest (heart failure) and her combatants were arrested and later put on station bail.

Kenisha Baird was known as the girl with the ‘sweet smile’.