“Ain’t no words. Ain’t no feelings. Everybody numb.”
Tori Bascombe was left reeling from the horror that unfolded just outside her Sandbox Avenue, Bayville, home on Monday night, when her partner of 12 years, Akil Blacks Hinds, was gunned down moments after they tucked their daughter into bed.
Now, instead of planning staycations for A’niyah’s eighth birthday, she’s preparing to mark it without the man who “eat, sleep and breathe” their little family.
Fighting back tears, Bascombe said what began as a quiet family evening turned into a nightmare.
When Barbados TODAY visited the couple’s residence on Tuesday morning, the mood was sombre. Family members huddled together, quietly comforting one another, as Bascombe spoke with red, puffy eyes from hours of crying.
“My daughter crying every minute…,” she said, sniffling. “My daughter gonna be eight the 17th of October and we planning all sorts of staycations. Every minute she say she want to go way and this is what happened.”
Still struggling to process the shock, Bascombe recounted the moment her life changed forever.
“Last night my boyfriend was laying down on top of the bonnet… I went inside… all I could do is holla for ‘babe, babe, babe’… when I come back he was down on the ground laying down asking for help.”
Lawmen said a masked gunman approached at about 10:10 p.m. and fired several shots, striking 36-year-old Hinds. He was taken by private vehicle to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries.
Bascombe was adamant that her partner was not involved in any shootout, dismissing rumours circulating in certain sections of the media.
“No, it wasn’t [a shootout],” she said. “I assume that that would have to be a robbery, because he had on a chain, and we don’t know where the chain is now. I ain’t get it back from the hospital and it ain’t bout here.”
She described Hinds as a devoted family man, known and loved throughout Bayville for his calm, easy-going nature.
“Honestly, he was a family man, I kid you not. He eat, sleep, and breathe me and he daughter; we join at the hip. If you see he, you see me and A’niyah. You could ask a thousand people who he does be with — he daughter and he child mother.”
Their evenings, she said, were usually quiet as they sat outside and bonded — and Monday was no different.
“If we ain’t let she run bout outside for a lil bit, we come in 7 o’clock, and let her eat, [after] she done do her homework, we would come back here and sit down and breeze ’cause the nights hot. So we would just come outside and sit [down, I] on my phone and just, you know, cool till we get tired. And then go inside. But last night was the unfortunate night.”
Though she acknowledged that Bayville carries a reputation for violence, Bascombe said the area had been peaceful for some time. Now, however, she admitted to feeling uneasy.
“I would say yes [I’m scared],” she confessed. “It happen after 10 or [close] to 10 and I have not even dozed off, I do not feel sleepy, I feel charged.”
She believes Hinds may have been targeted, but cannot understand why anyone would want to harm him.
“I would not even stand here and tell lies. The man is talk to you about God. How to be getting back with God. He would say ‘Rasta, you know you got to sit down and focus on yourself’. Other than that, ‘Rasta, we got to get a little money, we got to get a house. You know, Ni got to be comfortable’. We plan all types of things.
“I could carry you to 1 000 people, this man is bored you with the talk of the Almighty Creator. Men is start to drop sleep so and say, ‘Blacks, man’. So why [him]?”
Hinds, she said, loved football and looked forward to spending weekends watching matches on the pasture on Stadium Road, St Michael, and in Brittons Hill, and he wanted to watch some of the Prime Minister’s Cup fixtures that were closer to home.
Bascombe said her partner was a bridgeman at Chamberlain Bridge in the city.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.com
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