Family members of the 22-year-old man captured in a viral social media video being struck in the head with a piece of wood at Fitts Village in St James are feeling his pain.
At the home of victim Ramar Nurse at 4th Avenue, Pickwick Gap, St Michael, his father Ronald Nurse told Barbados TODAY he had little knowledge of the details leading up to the attack on his son, which has left the young man in hospital, nursing injuries to his head and ear.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know the man [perpetrator], I don’t know who he was with, nothing like that. The police are dealing with it,” said Nurse who described his son as a man who “just likes to look pretty”.
Regardless of the circumstances, Ronald said, “All of us [family members] feel one another’s pain, while revealing that Ramar is the second of three siblings, a brother and a sister, who all live in the family home with both parents.
“I wouldn’t even want to tell you how I felt when I saw the video and I don’t want to tell you how I feel now,” he said of the brutal attack.
“I will never forgive that. Even if the Almighty God came down and tell me to forgive him for that, there is no way. I am just a man and I would never forgive that.”
His father is adamant that the unemployed, former Alexandra School student is no troublemaker.
“The neighbors would tell you he is unemployed but he is from his house, to his car and from his car to his girl. He doesn’t go by any corner and lime or anything like that. So for some person who is just about their own business, I don’t see why he should be involved in that,” he said.
While refusing to disclose his son’s condition, Ronald said, “I ain’t really want to state how he’s doing right now . . . I understand that there are people out there saying that he is dead, so I would leave it at that.”
Given that the full details of the incident have not yet come to light, given the incident’s wide circulation on social media, Ronald is appealing to Barbadians to stop jumping to conclusions.
“It is a fact that people are walking around saying ‘why did he get out of the car?’ and I agree that he should not have gotten out of the car . . . . Maybe he could have just driven along. But that does not give the man the right to hit him with a piece of wood. Perhaps he had gotten out of the car to explain himself better. That is the choice that he made.
“The public looks at a picture or a video and decides the whole story, just from looking at a picture. A lot of things that are being said are untrue. They don’t have a clue and people should keep their mouths quiet and look and observe. That is how they would learn,” the father said.
