The Tribune

A SPECIAL REPORT by Jeffrey Butler

THE death of a loved one is an experience everyone fears no matter what their age. Whether it is illness or old age the loss can be devastating, turning the lives of those left behind upside down. For too many families in our society today death comes through violence, a loved one shot dead in the street, a life wiped out in seconds. To most of us just a headline, a few pictures or brief video on social media, just another number to add to the ever-growing murder tally.

But what lies behind that oh-so brief story? How did the victim come to die, what effect did his loss have on his family and the community they lived in?

Here’s just one story, typical of many from the other side of the street, a long way from the condos of Cable Beach and over the bridge on Paradise Island.

In less than five years one family lost three young men who were brothers, sons, grandson and great grandsons. In our inner cities most households are tight-knit and although our communities are not as close as they once were deaths through violence still ripple out affecting all those who know the family.

The first to die, we’ll call him Leroy, was a father of three young boys who loved and idolized their dad. His mother loved and supported him although she did not approve of his lifestyle. Even though he was the youngest, Leroy’s older sisters looked to him for strength. He was the man of the house because like many a typical Bahamian home he had a father who came round only occasionally. His was really a single-parent home where his mother did her best to care and provide for her children. They may not have had much but the house was filled with love.

Every parent tries to steer their children in the right direction but inevitably they will always follow their own path. For Leroy, like too many in his situation, he chose drug dealing which is always a 50/50 game. There’s a chance you will make big profits and the chance you may end up arrested or killed. Unfortunately for him he experienced all three.

As a dealer everyone in the business is your competitor and most of them become your enemy, it’s a dog eat dog world out here. The more popular you become the more enemies you make and a fast moving dope spot is prime real estate which everyone wants to own. On the streets one can often hear the term ‘get down’ or ‘lay down’ meaning become a part of my team, operate under me or get laid down permanently.

Leroy was an independent type of guy, held his own to put money in his pocket for his family and friends. He stood out and his rivals were jealous.

On a humid night with people milling around outside and cars passing by he was gunned down on his doorstep while he was having a conversation with a family friend.

His two sons and girlfriend were just a mere five feet away indoors as the shots rang out. Instinctively all she could do was roll out of the bed on to the floor and protect her boys.

Leroy hadn’t had time to react. His killer had crept up a path at the side of his home and had the perfect drop on him. Multiple shots about the body and one to the head. When the life of a young Bahamian male is lost part of our country’s future dies with him, whether it’s the change he could have made within himself to be an upstanding citizen or the people he could have inspired to excel far more than their environment had to offer.

With each unsolved murder or any crime where no one has been brought to justice it creates a disconnect between the families and the judicial system. We start to feel as if the police are not doing their job or simply don’t care. We start to hate the society we live in, knowing someone, somewhere knows something to help bring closure and justice to a mourning community. Yet nothing is said. It’s as if no one cares until they are faced with the same situation. We add to the problem instead of helping to solve it.

My heartfelt and sincere condolences go out to the friends and family of all murder victims.

We all handle death in our own way and for Leroy’s nephew ‘Jerome’ it was a hard and heavy burden he quickly struggled to cope with. Although Jerome’s father was active in his life, his uncle was everything to him. When you lose something so precious sometimes you start to lose focus on your purpose in life and Jerome didn’t see the path he was beginning to take. His pain and anger were hard for him to come to terms with. His daily routine became walking down the street to his uncle’s house, a nightmare ritual where he would see the images of the bullet-riddled lifeless body of his uncle.

In the inner city we all know the ghetto does not sleep and somebody knows or hears something but we also know loose lips get clipped. For Jerome his only solace was the time he spent at his girlfriend’s house. Being vocal about his pain was a way for him to channel his emotions but it also attracted unwanted attention. The more he spoke with anger and aggression the more unwanted attention he drew on himself.

The word on the street was Jerome wouldn’t rest until he saw justice was done. The wrong people were listening and they decided to act.

On a quiet night just two corners away from where his uncle was murdered, the once quiet 17-year-old boy was himself gunned down. Just as he’d arrived in front of his girlfriend’s home a dark coloured four-door car drove up, someone inside called him over and then opened fire.

Who gives anyone the right to end a life, especially one that never really began, a young man who had dreams and desires? For far too long we have been turning a blind eye to the social issues of our country, we have ignored as a community the fact that petty disputes turn into murders, that lack of a strong and stable family structure has had a huge part to play in the upbringing of our children. This is not just in our inner city communities, this applies to islands from Inagua to Bimini where in most cases our young men and women have been raising themselves from an early age.

Here we’ve seen an uncle and nephew both murdered in less than a year. How does a wound heal when the proverbial knife is swung at it repeatedly? How can we expect our country to heal when we allow a broken system to continue to function by revolving offenders in and out of a prison designed only to incarcerate, but not rehabilitate? Or when we as citizens do not preform our parental or civic duties when it comes raising, guiding and mentoring our youth to become positive leaders for the next generation.

Sadly Leroy and Jerome’s family suffered one of the hardest trials made more painful as they feel the police and judiciary are not doing enough to bring them justice and closure.

Worst of all the community they were born and raised in has let them down. Somebody out here knows something but no one is saying anything. This certainly brings a sense of ‘it’s every man for himself out here’ and not the ‘be our brothers keeper’ nation we were built upon.

This would definitely make anyone feel disconnected from society especially a 15-year-old boy, Jerome’s brother Shawn who was left behind to try and cope with losing a brother and an uncle to guns all the while trying to live a normal teenage life

Not every lost life is a physical loss. While we may associate death with someone dying it can also be seen as someone’s dreams, desires and aspirations being killed as well. This was the case for Shawn.

It’s hard for us as adults to carry on with our daily lives after experiencing the death of our loved one. Imagine the affect it would have on a boy still in school, dreaming of a basketball career and at the same time trying to be a strong support for his younger siblings and mother. It’s hard to hear your mother and grandmother cry every day, it’s even harder to try to explain to your younger brother how and why his uncle and brother died.

Somehow despite what he’d been through Shawn still managed to hustle enough money from sponsorship to pay for a trip when his High School team travelled to North Carolina. He also worked hard at his passion for basketball and managed to secure a full scholarship in the States when he graduated at the end of the school term.

It was this glimmer of hope bursting through the dark clouds and fog of death that he needed to distract him from the tragic murders of his uncle and brother, but their loss still haunted him.

He was overwhelmed with anger, sadness, rage and a sense of disbelief. This started to affect his school life and he began finding himself unable to focus in class, getting into fights and arguments most of which he tried to avoid.

Through it all Shawn’s main focus was just to finish the school year and go off to college. In his mind he worked out he could avoid trouble at school by simply not attending. In the morning his mother would see him leave home as if he were going to school, but he never made it there. As soon as he knew she’d gone to work he doubled back home.

Of course it couldn’t last and when the school contacted his mother he was ordered back to school, even though there were just a few weeks of term remaining.

Death comes in threes.

Back at school inevitably he found himself caught up in a fight. When someone attacked one of his friends outside the school grounds at first Shawn tried to keep out of it. He ran to a barber’s shop to hide inside but the adults threw him out. The adults he had run to for protection had turned their backs on him.

A few weeks just near the end of the fall term another fight broke out and this time that street bravado took hold and he waded in to help a friend. Somehow a knife was in his hand and Shawn struck out, fatally injuring his friend’s attacker.

Another young Bahamian killed for nothing, Shawn’s life over because next stop was jail not the college he thought would be his escape to a better life.

Could it all have been avoided if he was allowed to stay home with just a few weeks left to go off to college?

Could it have been avoided if he were not kicked out of the barber shop? Or if the parents and school faculty did more to find a peaceful resolution to the playground fights Shawn had stayed at home to avoid?

Who is asking how big of a factor for Shawn was his brother’s and uncle’s murders? At the very heart of it where was his uncle’s father in those years when a child needs direction in life?

All we have now is a boy behind bars to be raised by hardened criminals and officers who see him as nothing more than a murderer.

As adults and parents we have a major role to play when it comes to grooming and raising the future leaders of this great nation.

If we don’t help solve the problems now WE WILL have to face them later when the chickens come home to roost. It’s already happening, just read the news.

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