Just three months after losing her 40-year-old daughter, Valerie Griffith is preparing to bury her son, the lone casualty of a 24-hour spate of gun attacks in a section of The Pine, St Michael.
According to residents of Golden Rock, 44-year old Keron Anthony Hodge was in the wrong place at the wrong time when masked gunmen sprayed the area with bullets.
They said it was the third time in less than 24 hours that men had opened fire on a popular liming spot leaving bullets holes lodged in nearby front doors, galvanize structures and sidewalks.
“Out here felt like final destination over the last couple days. Something is obviously going on in the neighborhood and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” one resident said.
While many struggled to come to grips with the terror on the streets, there was consensus among neighbors and family members about the deceased man, better known as ‘Gus‘. For many, he was a father figure who had the best interest of the youth at heart.
“People from all about are saying one thing about him. He’s a very nice fellow and he didn’t deserve this. Yes, The Pine has a bad name but not everybody is bad,” said Rhonda Hollinsworth, a community figure known as ‘Mother‘.
The late Keron Anthony Hodge.
A stones throw away in nearby Midway Lane, his mother Valerie Griffith was in pain for a son she described as very nice, caring and hardworking.
“He lived very peacefully and was a free spirited person. He wasn’t the type of guy to get angry and worked up. He would quote the scriptures with you and encourage you not to be worried and stressed. He was a friend to everybody so I don’t know how this happened,” recalled the grieving mother who was surrounded by teary eyed family members.
Even more painful for the 68-year-old mother was the fact that she lost her daughter in July, who was living overseas.
Griffith told Barbados TODAY that on Saturday night, she received a late night phone call from her neighbor, who said her son had been shot and it was “bad”.
“By the time I got to the hospital there, my son was already dead. I don’t know what went down. I don’t know what to say but my son is gone…. I just lost my daughter on the 8th of July and now he is gone.
“Its so hard, because I didn’t even get over her as yet and now for this here to happen, I just don’t know what is going on,” she said. (KS)
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