The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

EDWARD Thompson Jr, a 27-year-old single father, was the primary caretaker for his mother, who suffers from heart disease, when he was murdered Tuesday night on Fleming Street.

Police said the father of three children, ages four, six, and eight, was walking on Fleming Street when a masked man on a motorcycle rode up on the side of him, firing shots in his direction.

His aunt told The Tribune her nephew had just visited a web shop to put funds in an account when he was shot.

She was standing on a porch when she heard the shots ring out.

Her last conversation with her nephew was about identification cards needed for a job –– his failure to get a National Insurance Board card because he needed a birth certificate.

She said her nephew worked multiple jobs, including construction and landscaping, to help provide for his family.

She talked about how he went about his days like anyone else, handling the small, ordinary tasks that make up a life — taking his son to school, making sure his children were fed, helping his mother with chores — only to be senselessly killed.

His family, she said, had been trying with his leadership to get his mother a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine, which helps with obstructive sleep apnea.

She said her nephew’s four-year-old child had taken the news of his death particularly badly.

“He saying he daddy went to the shop and he ain’t come back,” she said, speaking to The Tribune anonymously.

Dealing with her nephew’s death, she said, is worsening his mother’s health.

“She catching shortness of breath right now and I trying to calm her down,” she said. “The more I cry, the more she crying, so I try to stop crying, although it’s a blow for me also because I watch my nephew grow up.”