Rel­a­tives of teenag­er Ja­heim Lewis who was gunned down on Sun­day night in En­ter­prise, yes­ter­day ap­pealed for the sense­less killings to stop.

Call­ing on those re­spon­si­ble to recog­nise the val­ue of hu­man life, a close fam­i­ly friend begged those watch­ing and lis­ten­ing, not to en­gage in any reprisal killings fol­low­ing Lewis’ death.

The fam­i­ly friend said rel­a­tives were wor­ried about pos­si­ble reprisal killings as “there are peo­ple in the area who don’t like what hap­pen”. They said al­though po­lice pa­trols were in­creased in the area, this did not lessen the on­go­ing al­leged “war tak­ing place in the area”.

The friend, who wished to re­main anony­mous, de­scribed Lewis as a qui­et child who loved foot­ball.

Lewis, 18, was shot mul­ti­ple times around 8 pm on March 31. His body was lat­er found be­hind a neigh­bour’s house low­er down the street.

He had a qui­et birth­day cel­e­bra­tion with his fam­i­ly on March 7.

Ad­mit­ting Bha­ga­loo Street, Crissie Ter­race, En­ter­prise, where Lewis lived, wasn’t the safest place, the fam­i­ly friend told re­porters at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, “His moth­er was al­ways look­ing for him to make sure he around as the area not re­al­ly good.

“Any­time you look­ing for him, he out­side play­ing foot­ball or look­ing to go some­where to play foot­ball.”

Lewis, who at­tend­ed the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School, re­cent­ly be­gan com­plain­ing of “get­ting trou­ble” to come home. The fam­i­ly friend ex­plained, “It wasn’t trans­port, but peo­ple try­ing to in­ter­fere with him.”

In­di­cat­ing Lewis had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in mov­ing down South to stay with his fa­ther’s fam­i­ly so he could learn straight­en­ing and paint­ing, the fam­i­ly friend said, “He was or­gan­is­ing to go but know­ing he would miss every­body here and the dras­tic change, he was sup­posed to al­ready be there but no­body knew any­thing like this would hap­pen.”

The friend claimed rel­a­tives did not know why Lewis had been tar­get­ed by gun­men as he had just re­turned from play­ing foot­ball.

The fam­i­ly spokesper­son said since the shoot­ing, “No­body re­al­ly feel­ing safe right now.”