Murder victim Jermaine (Red) Pitcher would have celebrated his 31st birthday today if he had lived.

Instead, his mother Goldie O'Neal will spend another day mourning and wondering why one of her son's killers, Ryan (Tiger) Ball, has been set free barely three years into his sentence for butchering Jermaine in the street.

Jermaine had been chased on Reid Street, caught and held by Jamal (Knolly) Robinson and Keniel Ingham while Ball stabbed him frantically in the back with a machete.

Ball inflicted 19 separate wounds, including a fatal blow which pierced Mr. Pitcher's left lung and was thrust so deeply the machete nearly emerged from the front of his chest during the February 2000 attack.

Jamal (Knolly) Robinson was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years while and Keniel Ingham got 12.

Today, Ball is a free man after being paroled after serving just over a third of his sentence for manslaughter.

Mrs. O'Neal said: "I don't think it's right. How is it you get murderers and they get 30 years and this boy kills my son and he's out in three years?

"August 5 was my son's birthday, he would have been 31."

Jermaine's murder and the scant justice of the trial cuts her to the core.

"It's like I am not being treated like a human being but like I am a dog or a slave."

She said by agreeing to a plea bargain prosecutors had let Ball off the hook when he should have been charged with murder and received a life sentence. That decision merely encouraged criminals to think they could get away with violence she said.

Mrs. O'Neal fears the day she sets eyes on Ball.

"I haven't seen him yet, I don't know what I would do.

"I have dreams about my son. One time I dreamed he was alive. If you lose a child you never get over it. It depresses me."

Bermuda's increasing violence also gets her down her because she remembers days when things were so much better.

She denied the murder had anything to do with drugs but said there had been jealousy over a girl and anger that Jermaine had intervened in a fight.

"Tiger had a knife and cut him up, but now he is out their enjoying his life.

"He took my son's life for nothing."

The murder has changed her life and that of her family. "I don't really go out much now, I just sit in."

Her sentiments were echoed by Jermaine's cousin Vanessa Paynter. Both she and Mrs. O'Neal are sick of Bermuda and want to leave - if they had somewhere to go.

She said of Jermaine: "We were really, really close.

"What are we supposed to do? There's a lot of angry people, especially in St. David's."

She blamed Khamisi Tokunbo who was Director of Public Prosecutions at the time for accepting a plea bargain with Ball rather than charging him with murder.

"There's no justice, it's the same as the Rebecca Middleton case. I don't know how he came about with this decision.

"They should have given him (Ball) life. He deserved life.

"It bothers me, ever since it happened it never leaves me."

She said she had written to Ball in prison to get an explanation but he never replied.

Prison Commissioner Hubert Dean confirmed Ball had been released but he stressed parole was not given lightly and inmates had to undergo a number of tests including psychiatric and pyschological ones.

He said: "He has a right to be put up for parole."