Karen McMaster was already in bed in Keartons, Barrouallie around 11:20 p.m. Tuesday when, over the noise of rain, she heard the unmistakable sound of a single gunshot.
She got up and peered tentatively outside a window of her living room, moving the curtain just enough to see outside.
McMaster saw her grandson, Alrick Bulze, 25, standing in the street.
She called one of her sons who was inside the house and told him it seemed as if something had happened to his nephew.
Bulze was still standing in the street right outside his grandmother’s house, where he also lives, when his grandmother came outside.
“I try to hold him and I called my son. We try to call him, but, how he get the shot, it come like he eyes and them get weak.
“I said, ‘Alrick! Alrick! What happened to you?’ No response,” McMaster told iWitness News at her home on Wednesday.
McMaster said that with the raining still falling, she and two of her son tried to take Bulze into her patio.
“But when we really thing (realised), he been done dead, so we put him back on the pitch (road),” McMaster told iWitness News.
“Up to now he ain’t say nothing,” she said, adding that she did not see anyone else after hearing the gunshot.
The grandmother, who raised Bulze and his sister from childhood, wondered if his shooting was in any way connected to an altercation that Bulze had with a relative on June 19.
An injury form issued by police in the Central Leeward town shows that a man, said to one of Bulze’s relatives, had lodged a report with police saying that Bulze had struck him in the head with a stone.
The alleged incident is said to have resulted in the man receiving a wound to the head that took three stitches to close.
Police arrested Bulze and took him to Kingstown where he was charged with an offence but granted bail.
McMaster told iWitness News that her grandson had told her that he had gotten in the altercation with the man after his younger brother complained that the man had abused him.
“I feel bad, real, real bad,” McMaster said of the death of her grandson.
She said that police had taken a man into custody in as part of their investigation into Bulze’s death, but said it was not the same man with whom her grandson had had the altercation.
Police said Wednesday that t reports are that he was attacked and received a gunshot wound to his chest.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
A postmortem examination is expected to be performed on his body.
Bulze’s death brings the homicides count for the year to 18.
Its time we started offering anger management and conflict resolution classes to at risk youths and other at risk groups in SVG. We also need to set up informal mediation mechanisms at the village level. These measures can go some way in reducing the mindless violence that we have in this country. Most importantly we need much better role models.
Another of our precious children gone. May he rest in peace.
You are right about the role model suggestion. It is sad that we have a few politicians that portray sex, debt, borrowing, insults and intimidation as positive traits. In the old days politicians would lead by GOOD example. The way to reduce these problems in SVG is by providing an environment where the Private Sector can create jobs. In that way there would be less involved in the drug trade and many would have hope and a higher self-esteem. Government in SVG is only concerned with the big-shots having good pay and lots of bonuses to live in luxury and comfort, travel the world in search of loans in first-class comfort. They do not care about the people or they are too incompetent to make a change. They talk love and jobs but show none of that, just debt and victimization.
Anger seems to be common cry in our blessed land. But how can we curb anger when there’s no jobs, people are hungry for progress, no direction of how the country is going, nothing to inspire too? Anger management is hopeless in such situation. These young people needs to occupy themselves with jobs and opportunities to better themselves. When someone has a job they would be less likely to do something to jeopardize loosing their job so they would avoid arrested or getting into trouble.
Yes! The present government thinks that raising taxes creates jobs, (See his excuse why he recently raised VAT). He is supposed to have a degree in economics, instead he has an EXTREME indoctrination into Keynesian Socialism, The worst form of economics for a country ever imagined!
The best way to create an environment where the Private Sector can create jobs is by LOWERING TAXES!!! Compare Singapore to SVG. The PM needs to see how the USA became wealthy and why they are now failing. Our problem is the GREED of the government has put the balance too far from away from the people and too much for the government to mismanage and waste on benefits for the big shots while the economy fails.
Brown Boy , I agree with you 100%.