Murder #23…

Despite an over two-month national shutdown, Barbados is once again flirting with a record-breaking year of murder as the country’s 23rd slaying claimed the life of car body repairman Henderson Moonie Branch.

But the Director of the Criminal Justice Planning and Research Unit Cheryl Willoughby has defended the effectiveness of numerous social interventions implemented by Government and law enforcement officers but has acknowledged that they may not be resonating with their intended targets.

Branch’s murder, which unfolded just a stone’s throw away from his Train Line Road, St Michael home has brought the national total just short of half of last year’s record-breaking tally of 49. It also left scores of bystanders scampering for their lives and two men, ages 24 and 25, and a 58-year-old woman wounded.

Tight-lipped residents in the community, better known as Red Zone, told Barbados TODAY that Thursday night’s gunplay was the second “serious” round to unfold this week.

“I was just about to go into my bed and I heard gunshots. Then I looked outside and saw everyone running and when I got up and read the news, it said there was a fatal shooting,” said one shaken resident, who recalled hearing more than five gunshots around 10 p.m.

“I… hear gunshots out here all the time, but the first time I ever heard it so regularly was on Monday and last night. Those were some very serious times to me. The scary thing about it is that the guy who was killed doesn’t interfere with anybody, so I don’t know if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the resident told Barbados TODAY.

As family members including Branch’s son and brother moved his belongings out of the 53-year-old’s house, the consensus was consistent. The slain car bodywork specialist must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Henderson Branch was a good fellow, a great fellow and I feel very hurt, especially because he doesn’t deal with ‘that kind of business’. Moonie was a father and a family man… and anybody could tell you about him because he had friends all over Barbados and he was a genuine fellow,” said a close friend of the deceased.

Calls to Attorney General Dale Marshall and Commissioner of Police Tyrone Griffith for an assessment of spiralling violent crime went unanswered all day on Friday. Barbados TODAY did reach Deputy Commissioner Erwin Boyce but he was unavailable for comment at the time.

In her assessment, Willoughby acknowledged a lull in homicides during the shutdown but said she could not comment on the current trajectory or the true impact of the pandemic on the rate of slayings this year.

But she disclosed that this year’s murder tally is relatively consistent with the pattern over the last five years.

“To date, it has not exceeded what we have seen for the past five years. Last year, we had a record number of murders, and so we have to wait and see what is happening in the various communities and wait and see what the final outcome will be come December,” she told Barbados TODAY.

“I would not be speaking as a scientist if I said the shutdown impacted the numbers, and I cannot say that. But what I will say is that one murder in any given year is one too many and I am hopeful that we will continue to have interventions at the family and community level, so that persons will understand the need to resolve conflict rather than using violence to do so.”

Research shows that young males are almost consistently responsible for violent crimes. Willoughby promised that more research from her department would be focused on this demographic, adding that she aimed to provide deeper insight near the end of 2020.

But she maintained that it is unfair to suggest that ongoing social programmes are not working, even as she admitted that in many cases, the programmes are not reaching the intended targets.

The Government’s top crime researcher said: “We have to look at whether they are actually taking into consideration what they are learning at the community level, and trust me, Barbados has a lot of intervention programmes both within the schools and at the community level, but we have to look at whether people are utilizing these programmes and whether they are effective in terms of people being able to use the learning they have gained and putting them into viable income-generating projects.”

At the scene of Thursday night’s murder, one man offered this perspective on the recent spate of violent incidents: “The youngsters need to mature. I don’t know what is going on, and I am not just talking about here in the Red Zone, I am talking in general in Barbados. It’s like people have guns and feel very powerful, and I believe that something has to happen about this.”

Another said: “The men just don’t care. They don’t care about the police or the Government or anything.”

kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb