21-year-old shot, dies at hospital

Veronica Haynes will remember her son Ashawn Haynes most for his last words to her as he lay in the male surgical ward of the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.{{more}}

“He say ‘Mommy yo vex wid me? I love you, I’m sorry. Remember me.’”

Ashawn spoke those words hours before he succumbed to a gunshot to the upper back last Friday.

On Wednesday, January 28th, 2009, at approximately 10 pm, while making his way to his Gomea home, Haynes was shot by some men in a vehicle at Evesham.

The bullet lodged in the upper vertebrates in his back and severed nerves in his spinal column, rendering him paralyzed.

It is claimed, had he survived the injury, he most likely would have been paralyzed from his neck down for the rest of his life.

The young man was 21- years- old.

The grieving mother reasoned that her son may have visited Evesham, after obeying a bail condition which required him to visit the Marriaqua Police Station.

She believes that he was ‘liming’ in Evesham before returning home.

On January 6th this year, he was granted bail after being arrested and charged for entering a dwelling house, armed with a 357 revolver and shooting at an occupant of that house on Christmas Eve last year.

His mother said that the second of four children was full of life. She noted that he was a very athletic and sports loving individual, who excelled as a student of the Dr JP Eustace Memorial Secondary School.

She claimed that although he was not a very bad person, he hung around with the wrong company; and this may be the reason he was killed.

“You’re known by the company you keep, and I used to warn him a lot about his friends.”

The still shaken mother said she would miss ‘Booga’ as he was called, and hope that the person or persons responsible would turn themselves in.

He was scheduled to be buried yesterday at the Windsor Cemetery in Evesham.

Investigations into the country’s most recent killing are still being carried out.