The mother of Dario Jean-Luc Holder-Branch, who was gunned down near his home Wednesday evening is trying to get over the shock of her son’s violent death.
In an interview at her Station Hill, St Michael home, Yolanda Capandeguy told Barbados TODAY that she accepted the fact her son has died, was not in denial and not too concerned about why he was shot.
Instead, she said she was trying to focus on positive things, even though this was a “painful experience”.
Police said the 32-year-old resident of 1st Avenue Godding Road, Station Hill St Michael – a few metres away from the District ‘A’ Police Station – was shot several times a stone’s throw away from his home around 6:15 p.m. A half-hour later, he was pronounced dead by a doctor at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where he had been rushed by car.
Capandeguy said she was at the home of her son’s father, who lived with Holder-Branch, when she heard gunshots rang out.
Although she was in shock by the sudden turn of events, she said she tried to maintain a calm disposition.
“I was at his dad’s house with his daughter, I didn’t bother to bring her by me,” Capandeguy said. “Jean-Luc came home just after 2 p.m. and we talked. He played with her, went on the phone and then he left the house. I guessed he went to a hangout by the tree. I dropped to sleep with her and got up when her granddad got home after 5:30 p.m. Then we heard the shots. At first, I thought somebody was knocking [on] the paling, then the dog started to bark. But then somebody came and shouted that Jean-Luc got shot,” she recalled. “I left the house, I asked if anyone called the ambulance and they said it would take too long to get here. I told them to let us try to stop the bleeding. He was shot more than once. He didn’t look distressed; he looked quite normal, as normal as one could be. His face wasn’t wring up.
“We went to the hospital in a vehicle and I think I was quite calm when all of it was happening. My chest was extremely heavy but I just asked for water. When I came home I was still calm.”
Capandeguy retained a calm disposition during her interview with Barbados TODAY. “I say I need to be in control but this morning in the wee hours, it hit me. I did a fair amount of crying,” she said. “I try to put things in perspective. It has already happened, I can’t do anything about it. I loved my son. He is my last boy of three. So that is how I look at it. I have to think about the other things I have to do since he passed.”
The mother of three said she was focusing her energy on preparing her granddaughter for school in September and burying her son.
Asked if she was seeking answers surrounding her son’s death, she said: “I am not even thinking about that, that is the truth. That would just be going around in my head. I will never know unless somebody actually comes in front of me and says. So I am not going to keep asking myself why it happened, what Jean-Luc could have done or why someone would want to do that to him . . . He was not involved in any criminal activity to my knowledge.
“My focus is on her, she has to go to school in September and registration has already started so I have to get her ready for reception. Then my other focus is on his funeral arrangements.”
Capandeguy, known in the entertainment fraternity for her performances at NIFCA and her involvement in the House Of Soca calypso tent, said she was out work and did not know how she would find the money to bury her son. She said she would greatly appreciate any donations members of the public wanted to offer.
Holder-Branch was a father of two three-year-olds. One lived with him and the other resides in Guyana. He was building a house next door to his father.
The Louis Lynch Secondary School and St Leonard’s Boys’ School old scholar was remembered as a “helpful” son and an “extremely loving and good father” who enjoyed gaming and once owned a business buying, selling and renting cars. Business slowed down at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and he recently landed a job in construction.
Holder-Branch’s father said he was too distraught to speak to Barbados TODAY when a team visited him at home.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
