The memories of the last tragedy to fact the Gittens and Burgess families of Marley Vale, St Philip erupted back to life as they were forced to deal yet again with the violent deaths of two of their own.
Two years after losing their brother and cousin, Dwayne Burgess, to a shooting, the families last night came face to face with the grim reality of the shooting deaths of young kin by unknown killers.
The usually peaceful atmosphere in the eastern parish was shattered as the sound of gunfire pierced the air, sending residents, some of whom police said were liming in the vicinity of the old Ralphie’s Minimart, scampering.
When the dust settled, 23-year-old Renaldo Gittens and 21-year-old Kyle Rico Sad Boy Burgess, both of Eastpoint, St Philip were dead.
This morning all that remained of last night’s story were the thick, curdled bloodstains where the victims took their final breaths.
Burgess’ distraught sister Tonya told Barbados TODAY she had been standing outside her aunt’s home with her children when the incident occurred.
“We were on YouTube listening and singing along with some music. Quick so I hear ‘paps’ and I holler for my aunty and then quick so again I hear ‘pax, pax’. The same time I get this jittery feeling. I holler for Gran to tell her come home and I start to hear everyone screaming out, ‘Conan [Renaldo] dead, Conan dead’ . . . but they didn’t see Rico’s foot was there. They didn’t see him. I was like, ‘where Sad Boy? Where Sad Boy?’ When we look back there and I get halfway somebody holler, ‘you, them is Sad Boy slippers there’. When I went back behind inside there my brother down inside there so dead. My brother wid he brains out,” she recounted.
Her cousin Carolyn stood nearby with tears slowing sliding down her cheeks. She said she arrived from work just after six in the evening and was home listening to music, when her peace was shattered.
“I hear this loud boom. I say, ‘wait, that can’t be a gunshot. Then I heard ‘paddax’. I run outside looking for my mum. I holla for ‘mum, mum, mum, dem is gun shots?’ she said ‘yes’, so I tek off to go for my daughter from next door when I see some fellas running, so I run behind them. They stopped me and told me, ‘don’t go down there, don’t go down there’. I asked them ‘why’? [They said] ‘Conan and Rico dead’. I said, ‘you mekking sport’. When I went down there and I start to walk I see my cousin [Renaldo] there wid all he brains out. I didn’t know that Rico was there inside the shed till somebody tell me that he in there.
“Dem is three men in my family that I lose in two years. In 2015, my other cousin [Dwayne Burgess] went parting a fight and they shoot he . . . .He birthday was the 27th of August which was Sunday, and in less than two days he brother come and join he,” she told Barbados TODAY.
On November 30, 2015, Dwayne, 35, was fatally shot during the St Philip Carnival. Police had arrested and formally charged 18-year-old Hakeem Roberto Stuart of Shelbourne Road, St Lawrence, Christ Church with his murder.
Carolyn noted that after Dwayne’s death, Rico became a bit of a recluse, not wanting to talk to anyone.
“We start calling him Sad Boy because he went into a shell. He didn’t want to talk to nobody, just quiet. Didn’t use to mix up or nothing, but a friend did teach he to go in the sea and he did love the sea.
“Conan, he just used to make you laugh. He did like he belly. He didn’t drink or smoke, nothing. Just was a normal body. The two of them were really close because they both lost their mothers at a close age . . . .They never used to trouble anybody. If Conan saw a fight was going to break out before the fight gine start he going run home. Rico was the same way,” she recounted.
As she spoke some of the young men who used to lime under the shed made quick work of dismantling it, with one of them stating that things would never be the same again there.
“This gotta come down. I mean . . . everytime we see this here you gine remember the two of the men and what happen here. We can’t deal with that sorta memory,” he said.
Meantime, Carolyn took issue with people who have been circulating photographs of the dead cousins on WhatsApp.
“I don’t like to see nobody that they family get hurt on no social media. That is a personal thing. You ain’t have no right to go putting pictures of people who have been through these kinda things because you don’t know who gine see it, who family member ain’t know what gine on,” she said, adding that her aunt in the United States had seen the images and had not slept since.
Last night’s killings brought to 25, the number of murders so far this year, three above the total for all of last year. Twenty-one of the killings have been gun related.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who lives a short distance away at Coles Terrace, and Member of Parliament for the area Michael Lashley visited the scene last night.
In condemning the shootings, Lashley called for an end to the violence and further stressed the need for the perpetrators to feel the full weight of the law.