Youth shot dead near Sharpes Playing Field

Veroni ‘Cutie’ Dublin wants the person or persons who murdered her eldest son to feel the same pain he felt, as well as the pain that is currently consuming her.

She said if her son was a troublesome person who used to interfere with people she would understand; but he was nothing like that.

Dublin was speaking to SEARCHLIGHT on Monday while sitting in the yard of her Trigger Ridge, Redemption Sharpes home, surrounded by family.

Dublin’s son, 25-year-old Collrise “Quinn” Pompey, was shot at Redemption Sharpes last Friday, March 2.  

Pompey was shot in the face at approximately 8:30 a.m. while awaiting public transport next to the Low Profile Bar near the Redemption Sharpes Playing Field. He died on the spot.

An autopsy carried out on Monday revealed that the bullet went through his left cheek and severed his spine at the base of his neck.

“I didn’t want to see him (during the autopsy), but I saw him, and he looks good,” said the grieving mother, while sitting in an area of Trigger Ridge known as 100 Steps.

Pompey said that Quinn, as he was affectionately known, would have celebrated his 26th birthday on August 28 and had no children and was her eldest son, but her second of five children.

“I know a lot of parents does say, ‘oh my son is a good son’, and it is not so, but my son don’t get in nothing with nobody. If the family had disagreement, he ain’t picking for nobody; he go say ‘well aryo is family, aryo need to deal with this’. Nobody in Sharpes, country, Leeward, could say that my son was disrespectful. The oldest person would tell you he is not a disrespectful person,” stressed Pompey, who was close to tears, but managed to hold them back.

She said her son had just built a small house, with which she helped, because she felt good to see that as a young man he had ambition and wanted to own something.

Pompey said also that her son was obsessed with working and earning his own money and one of his sisters who lives in Trinidad helped him start a small business.

She said on the morning he was killed, he was awaiting his younger brother Zaboto, so that the two of them could go to the Customs Department in Kingstown to collect the items that his sister had sent for him to sell.

“They set up my son; they tek him down like a dog and I don’t understand why. It ain’t right,” stressed Pompey, who is not sure why her son was killed.

She said a few months ago, her son was in a relationship with a young lady, but it ended because of another man.  

“I went to the other guy and say ‘my son say he done with the girl, he leave she give you so do not interfere with him’ and the guy left and went Barbados,” recalled Pompey, who added that another incident saw her going to a man’s mother and asking her to tell her son to leave Quinn alone.

“If somebody is found guilty of killing my son, I wah they hang. I am so mad, and I want revenge. People go say leave it to God. I understand that, but I want they hurt just as my son hurt. I would like them to bring back the death penalty,” said the distraught mother.

She added, “Look at what going on every couple weeks or month…I lie down in my house can’t sleep since this thing happen and I hear three gunshots pelt off after 11 last night (Sunday)…and I say come on, man. Sharpes was a nice place the other day when they had a whole heap ah them in prison and since them come out of prison is just all kinda things; when nighttime come you hear shots pelting off….”

Pompey says that she has two other sons and she is thinking about getting them out of Redemption Sharpes.

“…Now, I am fearful…I don’t understand, I can’t understand why…I can’t eat or sleep…even if he was crippled, I would rather that. I would have taken care of him,” said Pompey.

Pompey believes a police station should be built in Redemption Sharpes to help curb some of the incidents of crime and violence in the area.

She is hoping to bury her son on Saturday.

Reports are that police have detained several suspects in relation to the shooting, although up to press time no one had been charged. This latest killing is the sixth for 2018.