Out­spo­ken com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Avinash “Kr­y­sis” Seep­er­sad was mur­dered in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, on Sun­day night. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 11.50 pm, po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the re­port of a shoot­ing at John Street, off Mano Street in En­ter­prise. 

When they ar­rived on the scene, they found Seep­er­sad, al­so known as Ab­dul Wa­keel, 38, of Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, ly­ing un­con­scious at the side of the road. 

Seep­er­sad, who was re­port­ed­ly shot sev­en times, in­clud­ing twice to his head, was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he died whilst un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery. 

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be per­formed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James lat­er this week. 

Un­like Seep­er­sad, who was nev­er shy around a cam­era, sev­er­al res­i­dents de­clined to com­ment on his mur­der when a news team from Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Seep­er­sad, a self-pro­fessed for­mer as­so­ciate of the Un­ruly Isis gang, gained no­to­ri­ety be­cause he reg­u­lar­ly gave in­ter­views and post­ed so­cial me­dia videos on gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence in his com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing an up­surge in 2017. He was al­so vo­cal dur­ing crime talks with then-na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon in April of that year. 

Seep­er­sad ap­peared in the Al Jazeera doc­u­men­tary Caribbean to Caliphate, which sought to ex­am­ine why this coun­try had be­come a re­cruit­ment hub for the Is­lam­ic State. 

In Au­gust 2017, Seep­er­sad was charged with re­sist­ing ar­rest, us­ing in­sult­ing/an­noy­ing lan­guage, as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and ma­li­cious dam­age, aris­ing out of an in­ci­dent in which he was stopped and searched by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers. Seep­er­sad claimed that he had re­tal­i­at­ed af­ter the of­fi­cers made dis­parag­ing and de­mean­ing re­marks about his re­cent­ly de­ceased wife. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Seep­er­sad al­so had two sets of sim­i­lar pend­ing charges for oth­er run-ins with po­lice. He al­so had a pend­ing firearm pos­ses­sion charge from 2009 and an at­tempt­ed mur­der charge for which he was await­ing tri­al. 

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali, who had rep­re­sent­ed Seep­er­sad since 2010, said he was heart­bro­ken by his death. Ali said he was in­formed of the mur­der by Seep­er­sad’s par­ents, who live in the Unit­ed States, and claimed that he could not go back to sleep as he re­count­ed his fond mem­o­ries of Seep­er­sad. 

“He was a de­cent man con­trary to pub­lic opin­ion,” Ali said. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Is­lam­ic Front leader Umar Ab­dul­lah, who worked with Seep­er­sad on com­mu­ni­ty out­reach projects in En­ter­prise, said while he was sad­dened by the news of Seep­er­sad’s mur­der, it did not come as a sur­prise. 

“We ex­pect­ed this to hap­pen some­time now,” Ab­dul­lah said. 

He claimed Seep­er­sad was con­tin­u­ous­ly at­tempt­ing to change his life but was af­fect­ed by a lack of sup­port from rel­a­tives, who live abroad, and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. 

“The death of his wife took a toll on him and he was not the same,” Ab­dul­lah said, as he not­ed that Seep­er­sad suf­fered from med­ical and men­tal health is­sues.

“He was a spe­cial case and need­ed spe­cial at­ten­tion...I have to blame my­self al­so be­cause I did not do enough,” he added. 

Ab­dul­lah said his fond­est mem­o­ry of Seep­er­sad was see­ing him lead­ing prayers at a com­mu­ni­ty masjid sev­er­al years ago.

“This was who he was and this is what we have to re­mem­ber him for,” Ab­dul­lah said.