Young man shot dead at Largo Height

by Lyf Compton

Any time reggae artiste/musician Abuza Cyrus looks at the drum set in his band, he will remember his slain son Malachi.

“I trying to pretend to be strong. Nothing prepares you for this kind of stuff. I just trying to pretend to be strong,” Abuza told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday while standing a few feet away from where his son Malachi Cyrus was shot and killed on Saturday night.

Musician Abuza Cyrus, father of murder victim Malachi Cyrus.

At about 8 o’clock, Malachi, 20, was shot multiple times in his upper torso while sitting on the block; in an area of the neighbourhood that he frequented.

That was the second shooting incident in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) in about 16 hours.

The young man, who had just started a job as a data entry clerk at the Clear Harbor Call Centre, died at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital (MCMH) after a gunman stretched his arm over a man Malachi was sitting next to and pumped several rounds in him.

Malachi’s friend was said to be so scared, that he did not even look up when the gunman’s hand was over his head with the deadly weapon.

“It’s several different feelings in one. I’m kind of confused as to what anybody could have to kill Malachi for.

“He wasn’t that type of youth, not even close, everybody have them ways, but if I was to give him any ways, I would say he is a very stubborn minded person.

“But to say gangster, gun, them kind of things, nope, not at all; ganja, come on, but not them kind of levels with that violent type of thing,” Abuza said on Monday with tears in his eyes.

The dreadlocked musician said the way his eldest son died is fitting for a lot of other people, but not Malachi.

“I’m confused,” he lamented again, “what persons can have to kill Malachi? Is it a mistaken identity? What is it?”

Abuza said his son, who would have been 21 on January 8, 2021, was a good youth and he is not the type of person to say Malachi was good if he was in fact bad.

Malachi Cyrus

“… He was a good youth, real irie youth, everybody have them way, but he was a good youth, he did not deserve to die like that, the man now start to live.

“We had a little thing between us, father and son, we now start to mesh, yo overs, he now catching a lot of the things I used to be telling him; they kill the boy, what the hell I’m hearing here,” Abuza commented.

Abuza, Malachi and his brothers are best known as the stars in a tourism promotional film that aired a few years ago. Abuza said they were planning a new video to promote SVG seeing that the boys had grown up.

If Malachi were alive, he would also be in band practice today beating the drums.

But instead, his father has to tell the story of his death.

“I was in Villa when I got the call. This phone call just replaying in my brain and the way that my mother said ‘they shoot Malachi’, it was immediate confusion.

“The way my mother sounded I knew it was serious,” Abuza recalled while noting that when he saw his son dead on a table at the MCMH, “It didn’t feel real.”

“I ain’t feel pleased at all, honestly,” Abuza said.

He said Malachi was his first son, and as a result, the young man taught him many things, among them how to be a man, how to discipline a teenager and one lesson he wish he did not have to learn, how to bury your child.

“Malachi always plays the drum in the band and when I look at the drum set, I was like, ‘what the hell I seeing here? We just had an event last week Saturday’, this is unbelievable,” Abuza, the founder of the band “Legendary Fountain of Youth” said.

He noted that a man from the area was being questioned in connection with Malachi’s killing.

“There is a problem with the youths. Big time,” Abuza said while noting that a few weeks ago, he saw a dispute go from “minus zero to a stabbing” in no time.

“If youths think that is the way they should deal with a situation, God help us.

“My advice is, don’t be killing people’s children like this. If you have a problem, go to the parent, go to the police, use the right channels, don’t be killing people’s children like this and tell yourself you can go on living.

“It might not be so; it don’t have to be direct, but something can end up happen back to you or somebody that you love,” Abuza said.

Malachi’s death brings to 30 the number of homicides in St Vincent and the Grenadines for 2020.