Man stabbed, chopped during attack in Kingstown

Kesroy King once told his father that if anyone attacked him, they would have to kill him, because he would not back down from a fight.

And that is exactly what happened to the former student of the Intermediate High School (IHS), who celebrated his 21st birthday on July 3.

King, from Sion Hill, became this country’s 25th murder victim last Friday, September 15, when he was attacked at Higginson Street in Kingstown and hacked to death at around 8:30 a.m.

Soon after being mauled, which saw Kesroy receiving at least five wounds (four stabs and a chop), photos began making the rounds on social media and showed the young man lying in the street, paralyzed and bleeding before being placed in a vehicle that took him to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital (MCMH).

On Tuesday, speaking from his Sion Hill home, Douglas Thomas, the dead man’s father, said he misses his son, although at times the young man had his ways and could be difficult to deal with.

Thomas said for about three years now, since his son was in school, the young man would have small skirmishes with other boys from surrounding areas like Roseau.

He said once, a boy wrote something on Facebook and Kesroy confronted him and a fight took place, in which Kesroy was stabbed; so he would always warn his son to be careful.  

“I used to tell him don’t go down the road and if he go down the road to be careful and if he go down the road, don’t be in his phone, because when he head down he could get attack,” said the bereaved father, who appeared to be fighting back tears.

Douglas said he cannot really say what caused his son’s death, but he was told that the fatal incident on Higginson Street was the second time that morning that his son had been attacked.

He said on the fatal morning, Kesroy caught a van and the van diverted through the Roseau area, where the first incident took place.

According to Douglas, the van had to stop when someone threatened to chop the driver and Kesroy was pulled from the van by an individual. He said Kesroy managed to escape and hid in a classroom on the compound of the technical college.

“They got his bag and empty it out on the ground and after, he come back home and took another bag and head back out, because he was going by his grandmother the morning, down hospital,” said Douglas.

He said that it appears that Kesroy was being followed, for when he arrived in Kingstown, accompanied by a friend, he was attacked and killed.

Douglas said the friend who was with Kesroy said that someone pulled a “long knife” and was coming towards Kesroy, so Kesroy put his hand on his waist, pretending to have a gun, so the person with the knife backed off, and he (the friend) ran.

The friend told Douglas that about 10 minutes after he ran, he heard that Kesroy had been killed. That same friend was also in the van when Kesroy was attacked in Roseau, but hid in the public transport.

“I was at work when I got the call and I couldn’t believe it, I was kinda shock and had to make a phone call,” said Douglas, who said the chop his son sustained to the neck seemed the most severe of all the wounds.

When asked if he had ever expected to hear his son had been killed, Douglas answered in the affirmative, but said he was still shocked that it had actually happened.

“I did expect it, because I always tell him stop walk with cutlass,” said Douglas, who revealed that his son told him he was walking with a cutlass for self-defence and for use at his job at the National Lotteries Authority (NLA).

Douglas, a welder, said that he is trying to hold himself together by watching television, “to ease [his] mind”. He said if Kesroy is not buried tomorrow, September 23, his funeral service will be next Saturday, September 30, at the Kingstown Methodist Church.

He has advice for teens: “I will tell them keep out the crowd, stay out the crowd because when you in a crowd and they can’t get who they want, they will catch anyone.”

Police detained several persons for questioning and yesterday, Xavier “Bounty” Lynch, a resident of Cemetery Hill, Kingstown, was charged with the murder of King.