Relatives of a 19-year-old Christ Church man who was shot just outside his home at Cane Vale Crescent #4 last night say they are desperate for answers.
Police are reporting that Renaldo Rolando Sealy was liming in the area with other men when a motorcar approached, and one of the occupants opened fire on the group, before speeding away.
However, the victim’s grandmother Sandra Sealy is blaming the situation on police.
While reluctant to have any photographs taken, she told Barbados TODAY this afternoon that last night’s incident was the latest in a series of shootings that had left her and other members of her family living in fear over the past month-and-a-half.
On August 20, 40-year-old Orwin Lez Moore of Kendall Hill was shot multiple times in the upper body by an assailant, who subsequently fled the scene. The victim later died in hospital.
While explaining that last night’s shooting occurred a mere stone’s throw away from Moore met his death, Renaldo’s grandmother said she has not been able to rest easy at nights.
“Renaldo was there sitting,” she said, pointing to a large rock with a beer bottle next to it.
“I was inside and I heard ‘pax’ and I hear a car drive off. When I come out, he had been outside drinking a beer . . . I see he running shouting, ‘I get hit, I get hit’. It was like the [perpetrator] just come up stop, shoot and went long,” the woman said, adding that it had been pure “hell” for both her and her family since August.
“It is so hard for this family. We are not accustomed to nothing like this . . . . We don’t get in no problems, we don’t trouble nobody . . . . I just doing my own little thing, running a little shop there, but I don’t see why this happen,” she said while insisting that the police were at fault.
“The police take him [Renaldo] up at a funeral couple Thursdays ago and target him at the funeral. They never came to his home. they never do nothing like that . . . [but] from then we was getting problems,” she said, explaining that her grandson’s detention was in connection with Moore’s shooting.
However, she was adamant that Renaldo did not know anything about that incident.
“All he heard was the shots. From then, when the police hold him, we was being targeted,” she insisted.
Her sentiments were shared by Renaldo’s uncle Gregory Ward, who was equally insistent that his nephew was not responsible for the August 20 shooting.
“That night I heard the gunshots. I was in the shop and I got up and look round because I thought that it was down through here. When I didn’t see anything, I went and lay back down. I get up again and as I was going through the door to go outside and see what was going on outside, the two of we was coming through the door going outside together.”
Since that incident, Ward said the home, which he shares with his mother, Renaldo and the rest of the family, including several young children, had been shot at a number of times by unknown persons.
Ward showed Barbados TODAY four bullets holes which he said were left after someone shot at the house “two to three weeks ago”.
“I was inside the shop and other people was ‘bout here . . . . Everybody had to run for their lives. They shoot through there [and] my little man was there. He could have get shoot too,” a frustrated Ward said, adding that “a shot come through my mother’s bedroom, through the Bay window . . . and it went through the tv in the shop. This was two or three weeks ago,” he explained.
However, police said this evening they could not confirm that specific incident, even though they were aware of heightened gunplay in the area.
Another resident, who gave his name as O’Brian, said nothing like what occurred over the last two months had happened in his lifetime.
“I don’t like what is going on right now. It shouldn’t be happening. All of us should be living in love and harmony with one another, looking for work, making money. This isn’t anything that is called for. All that happen is that they just killing innocent people all the time and they are not getting anything out of it,” he lamented.