The Tribune

Man who took early shift to spend time with kids shot dead

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

GEOVANI Rolle worked an early morning shift at Jet Nassau on Sunday because he wanted to spend that evening celebrating Father’s Day with his two children, a 12-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.

He had planned to get them ice cream and take them to the movies, according to his sister, Melanie Rolle-Hilton.

Instead, police said when Geovani, a line service supervisor, arrived at work around 6am, he was approached and shot multiple times by the occupant of a white Nissan Note. Police later arrested a 25-year-old man of Fire Trail Road in the departure lounge of the domestic terminal at the Lynden Pindling International Airport in connection with the murder.

Geovani died on the way to the hospital, surrounded by relatives who prayed for him and urged him to fight.

Mrs Rolle-Hilton said her brother, the youngest of her five siblings, was an active and caring father who loved attending his daughter’s swimming meets and playing basketball with his son. She said his children adored him and looked forward to spending Father’s Day with him.

“His son, who is 12, likes basketball and really looks up to his dad,” she said. “His dad is tall and he always wanted to emulate his dad. His dad was his world.”

The close-knit family Geovani left behind is struggling to cope with the loss of someone they saw maturing and growing into his own.

Mrs Rolle-Hilton said she was asleep when her mother knocked on her door with the news that her brother had been shot.

She grabbed her shoes and ran to her car with her husband.

She later drove in the ambulance with her brother as paramedics fought to stabilise him.

“I just expressed to him how much we love him and how we wanted him to fight to stay with us, to listen to the sound of my voice, to pray in his mind, to think of his kids,” she said. “I just hoped it was enough for him to remain here with us.”

Mrs Rolle-Hilton said her brother was conscious for most of the ride. However, shortly before they arrived at Doctors Hospital, his condition deteriorated, and she realised he was in trouble.

She said Geovani’s children are traumatised about losing their father, especially on Father’s Day.

“They know that they will never get another Father’s Day with him,” she added.

Mrs Rolle-Hilton said her five sisters –– “all very strong women” –– were protective of their younger brother. When her brother went out, she would often sit near a window sill waiting for him to return.

“Whenever he would pull up in his car, I would run in my bedroom so he wouldn’t know that I was, what he would call, mothering him,” she said. “I will miss being able to do that.”

She said she and her brother never argued, and he was never angry.

Two weeks before he died, he began discussing with her a desire to start a business.

“We realised he was maturing so much,” she said, adding that the sisters were discussing financing his venture. “I knew how much he wanted it. In the last two weeks, he would always message me with ideas about what he wanted to do and was so excited about it.”

Geovani’s death was widely discussed on social media. Some claimed he was part of a love triangle.

Mrs Rolle-Hilton said she has avoided the social media chatter but has heard the story.

“I cannot speak to it, but I know my brother, and he doesn’t enter into things lightly, so despite what people might say or believe, it doesn’t give anyone a right to take a life, even if that is the case,” she said.

“As a family, we want the justice system to work for us to help us come to some sort of resolve in this matter because what has happened to our son, our brother, our nephew, is not something we would wish on anyone.”