Community in shock after losing one of its own to gun violence

Residents at King Street, The City, have been thrown into a state of shock after 20-year-old Tremaine Cummings of Gills Road, St Michael was shot and killed in the area on Saturday.

Around 7:20 p.m., Cummings was riding his bicycle along the King Street stretch when he was attacked and shot several times by an unknown assailant.

The young man was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was identified by his mother and siblings who gathered at the scene, just a stone’s throw away from their house, after 9 p.m.

A Barbados TODAY team at the scene saw Cummings’ grieving mother being comforted and held up, particularly after she viewed his body.

One King Street resident recalled that they were inside their home when they heard loud shots.

The resident said it was troubling that a woman was holding a young child in her arms and was standing very close to the incident.

“That had to be a shotgun from how them shots sound. The person fired about eight shots in him. The woman with the child was so shocked that she did not even move from where she was standing. I went outside after and hear he groaning, and when I look at him I realized that I know he from the time he was a baby. The groaning alone would have made you feel for him. He made the groaning sounds and then somebody say he just took his last breath,” the resident said.

Another resident called on law enforcement to get a grip of gun-related crime on the island, noting that “I can’t help to think that one of those bullets could have strayed and hit that child that woman was holding”.

“I tired of this foolishness. I sorry the boy dead but what if that child did get hit. It is time the people in power do something about all these guns, cause them coming from somewhere,” the resident lamented.

Barbados TODAY was unable to speak to Cummings relatives at the scene. (AH)