Sascha Wil­son and

An­na-lisa Paul

Twen­ty-year-old con­struc­tion work­er Christo­pher “Ricky” Joseph was gunned down ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing in Bras­so, a short dis­tance away from the po­lice sta­tion.

Po­lice say Joseph’s broth­er Col­ley, 23, along with 15-year-old Jerell Ganesh and 16-year-old Dar­ius Shadrack, were al­so shot when gun­men opened fire at an un­fin­ished wood­en struc­ture in Ca­paro Val­ley Road around 2 am.

Ganesh and Shadrack are stu­dents of Tabaquite Sec­ondary School. The shoot­ing oc­curred at Shadrack’s home.

De­tails sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent were still be­ing gath­ered by the po­lice yes­ter­day.

Joseph died at the scene, while his broth­er and the two teenagers are in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex, Mt Hope.

Joseph’s moth­er, Mar­sha, said the po­lice in­formed her yes­ter­day morn­ing about the shoot­ing. Point­ing out that the Bras­so Po­lice Sta­tion was a mere “foot­step” away from where the in­ci­dent oc­curred, she ques­tioned why of­fi­cers did not re­spond when the first shots rang out. Ac­cord­ing to a re­port, the po­lice on­ly be­came aware of the shoot­ing af­ter a man came to the sta­tion and re­port­ed the in­ci­dent.

The moth­er, who is vi­su­al­ly im­paired, called for jus­tice. “It is un­just. Peo­ple have no right run­ning in­to peo­ple’s homes and killing them be­cause of what­ev­er the case may be,” Mar­sha said.

“Look in Friend­ship (Vil­lage), the peo­ple that died via that same method. Gun­men run in the house and just start killing peo­ple like they crazy. Is ah set of hate and ar­ro­gance and ig­no­rance just run­ning, just float­ing around, and peo­ple just do­ing as they will.”

The moth­er of sev­en said she was still try­ing to process what could be the mo­tive.

While the po­lice said Col­ly­more was in­volved in the buy­ing and sell­ing nar­cotics, the moth­er said her sons worked in the con­struc­tion field and as far as she knew, were not in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I trust in God in all of this. Lives shouldn’t be tak­en like this be­cause they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty, and I be­lieve the po­lice has to get to the bot­tom of this,” she lament­ed. Mean­while, rel­a­tives who spoke with Guardian Me­dia af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing his body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, de­scribed him as al­ways jol­ly and hus­tling. One agreed he was now start­ing to en­joy life. “He was work­ing, self-em­ployed and al­ways hus­tling,” she said.

Hop­ing for jus­tice, one rel­a­tive whis­pered, “If we don’t get it with the law, we will sure­ly get it with God. God sees and knows every­thing, so that’s all I have to say!” Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.