Residents surprised at weekend stabbing of young man

The grandmother of 22-year-old Shakeem Holder who died on Sunday evening after being stabbed at Promenade Road, Bush Hall, St Michael is struggling to understand the circumstances that led to the incident.

A grieving Carnita Smith told Barbados TODAY that the story she heard about the circumstances that led to her grandson’s death was puzzling.

“From what I hearing he ain’t do the boy nothing. I wasn’t there, but the police tell me he was an innocent bystander; he ain’t provoke the fella nothing at all,” Smith said, recalling that she would never forget the phone call she received informing her that Shakeem had died.

He was stabbed around 5:15 p.m. and was pronounced dead at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where he was taken by ambulance.

The area where Shakeem was stabbed at Promenade Road, Bush Hall, St Michael.

Smith said the last time she saw Shakeem, who lived at Station Hill, St Michael, was last Saturday night when he visited her home.

She said that same Saturday he went to get a haircut as he prepared to begin classes at Skill’s Training from this week.

The grieving grandmother said the former Ellerslie Secondary student was also seeking employment and went to fill out applications last week.

“Shakeem was okay. The only thing is he was a little hot headed sometimes as most young people are. He mother tried to raise him in church but he come out. The mother ain’t taking this good at all,” she said.

Smith said Small, who is the son of Barbadian entertainer Andre Hannibal Holder, loved music and she believed he might have recorded a few songs.

Shakeem Holder (right) and his dad Andre Hannibal Holder.

When Barbados TODAY visited Promenade Road residents appeared to be shocked and disturbed about the incident. They said this was the first of its kind to take place in the area in many years.

One female resident who did not give her name said she was struggling to understand why the young man died.

“It wasn’t no fight. Shakeem had on he ear phones and he tablet in he pocket listening to his music.”

The resident said that as was customary, Shakeem came to the area to visit her son when the alleged perpetrator came from behind a tree and stabbed him.

“And the boy [Shakeem] look at he and say ‘just so?’ And Shakeem run around there and the blood was spraying. And he run up on my step and [the alleged perpetrator] push he onto my door and stab he again. He hold he neck and sit down on my step. My son and the fella below there wife run out with things and hold he throat,” she said.

“Shakeem is a really good boy. He was a very nice boy. He would come and if my daughter tell he go off the road it late go home, he going home. I never hear nobody say nothing bad about that boy,” she added.

The resident said she believed young people needed to be taught that they do not need to be as hard as stone, and willing to kill, to be considered a man.

“You need to teach boy children about empathy and about God. If you don’t teach young people this you are going to lose them because it ain’t one life that gone, it is whole two. A 17-year-old kill a whole boy who is 22.”

“The last thing he [Shakeem] said before he couldn’t say anymore is ‘Chris help me’.

“He come to shout me. He did now done shouting my sister and shouting my little niece and was coming around the corner to shout me because he know I was in my bedroom. “When I peep through my window he was on the step peeping over and by time I get around the house and went to he he was on the ground laying down,” the resident said.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb