Cave Hill residents say enough is enough after a man was badly wounded in gunfire on Montgomery Pasture on Tuesday. They said they are tired of the violence, but even more wary of what they see as silence and inaction from the authorities.
Police received a report of this latest shooting about 2:25 p.m. on Tuesday. Less than an hour later, another man was shot at Cane Vale, Christ Church, about 3:03 p.m.
Both men were taken to hospital by car.
Just over a month ago, a man was shot and killed by police during a patrol in Cave Hill, sparking outrage among residents, who alleged heavy-handed policing in a neighbourhood already grieving from recent violence: the death of Gavin Nicholas Archer, 24, who was killed in a drive-by shooting near the junction of White Hall Main Road and St Stephen’s Hill.
Residents remembered Archer as a helpful, kind and quiet soul, who loved to listen to music on his “boom box”.
When Barbados TODAY visited the area on Wednesday morning, a few people were gathered outside, shaking their heads in disgust as they spoke about Tuesday’s shooting that left one man injured and in hospital.
“It’s not only yesterday — the shooting all over,” one elderly man said, sitting on a step near the area. “Once men got guns, men gon’ shoot. You gotta get rid of the guns. And these young boys can’t buy no guns, so you gotta deal with the head….”
He was clear about who he meant. “People only chastising the young people, but de young people can’t bring guns in Barbados,” he said firmly. “A poor man can’t bring them in. Without the guns, we ain’t gon’ got no shootings.”
A van driver shared similar sentiments: “How are these guns getting in Barbados? Can you afford guns? You got money invested somewhere that you could take and spend it?”
The frustrated man said his daughter was home when the incident happened. “I was driving yesterday, my daughter call me: Daddy, I frightened, there was a shooting out here…not one place, all over. So it’s spreading.”
He was outraged, saying it could have been anyone in the area. “You can imagine it being me, or one of my children…come on, man.”
The resident is calling for harsher penalties for gun crimes in Barbados. “All these people need to be hanged, but these people just talk nuff; they want a jail pon the sea.”
He believes that what’s happening now is a reflection of deeper problems. “If the head bad — the whole body gone. The only body that can fix the head is God,” he said. “If you do actions and there’s no consequence, what you expect?”
He sighed as he looked down the street where the shooting took place.
“Barbados was once a beautiful, sweet place,” he said. “I honestly wish to move from this house.”
“Shops, everything shut early, why would everybody got to be scared?”
Another man in the area gave his views, saying this has been happening for years. “Men keep talking for a year and it’s the same thing every year,” he said quietly. “Once the police do them job.”
He pointed to the area the young man was shot at. “That walkway there, [he] pull there, a man pull up on the side, he come this side, the man shout he…the man get shoot. An ongoing feud, it aint gon’ stop till the roots dem uproot.”
A younger man sitting nearby on a bench said he knew the victim. “Yeah, he from ‘round here…not a bad person, just keep to heself,” he said. “I know he got a little girl.”
This shooting was the third for the year in Cave Hill after two fatal shootings in June and September, the second one involving police.
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