The father of Shakir Wells, the 22-year-old airline employee who was murdered in Wallerfield on Tuesday night, has described the death of his son as a heartbreaking tragedy. Wells, of Bon Air Gardens, Arouca, was among six people killed between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Terryl Wells said his son was “righteous and right-minded” and had been was wronged in the worst way possible.
“I don’t have the words to describe how I am feeling. I know a man does be lost for words and right now I am. It is really heart wrenching because of the type of child that Shakir was. I watched him excel at everything. It is hard.”
On Tuesday night, the former Trinity College East student returned from a trip to the United States. Contrary to initial reports, Wells was employed at American Airlines in the reservations and baggage department and was not a flight attendant.
Shortly after dropping off his bags at his Arouca home, he left to deliver an item for a friend at Antigua Road, Wallerfield. Shortly after arriving at the location, Wells and a friend were accosted by gunmen who opened fire on them before escaping in his Hyundai Elantra car.
His father, a police officer, said he was on duty when he got the news that his son had been shot.
He said: “About 11.28, 11.30, I received a call from a female saying that my son was shot. I inquired from her as to the area and she said Antigua Road, so I got up there. When I reach I was told that he had already been taken to the Arima Health Facility.
“I got there a little while before the ambulance. The ambulance came and he was still alive, I saw him gasping for air, his eyes were rolling up in his head. The doctors and attendants were working on him, they carried him into the trauma room and they spent a protracted period with him. They told me that he had to be transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.
“When they put him in the ambulance he lost pulse. They took him back in and worked with him and then the doctor told me, ‘Sir your son strong. He left us about five times and he succumbed to his injuries’.”
The grieving father said Wells was all a parent could have asked for.
“I watch him excel. He was always excellent in everything he did. He excelled in SEA, he excelled in school. He would never answer me yea, it is always ‘Yes Daddy, no Daddy’. Sometimes I’m at work at the station and I would see him pop up and say, ‘Son what happen?’ He would say, ‘Daddy you have lunch and I come to hug you up’.
“He would never say no, he was really all out there and it hard to know that I put that kind of effort into raising my son, all I wanted out of that was just to have the pride to say, ‘Aye, yuh did well’.”
He said his son had recently started tertiary level studies at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business.
On his son’s birthday last Christmas Eve, they had one of their final heart to heart moments.
“I told him on his last birthday that he makes me proud and I am glad to be his father. I will miss my loving son.”
Two people are assisting the police with their investigations into the murder.
