Yesterday evening at 6:00 pm, gunshots rang out in the King's Park Area when 31-year-old Loren Dale Augustus was shot on his way from work. Augustus had worked as a maintenance engineer at Tropic Air for 10 years and was known to go straight from work at the Municipal Airstrip to home where his two sons were waiting for him. But yesterday, a gunman with an execution to carry out radically altered that plan and today it seems that it will be a miracle if the gravely injured Augustus ever makes that trip again. His family tired to pick up the pieces today and we were there with them.
The 31-year-old Loren Augustus seen here with his sister in better times, is a far cry from the critically ill young man just barely clinging to life in this hospital bed. Again, today there was a sister at his side, watching as the respirator breathes for her brother. Doctor Jorge Hidalgo explained to us that his prognosis is very poor.
This is the bullet from a.22 pistol that is lodged deep in his brain. It is deep within the brain that there is no surgical procedure that can be performed to take it out. That was confirmed last night in a 4 hour surgery where doctors were unable to stop the bleeding in brain and the subsequent swelling of the brain. That bullet was planted yesterday evening at 6:00 pm, when a lone gunman waited at the corner of St. Thomas and St. Charles Streets for Augustus as he got off work at Tropic Air. He rode right up to Augustus who was on a bicycle, shot him in the head and then rode off - leaving him for dead on the street. When our cameras arrived at the scene, his cap was the only evidence of the encounter. And while police gathered clues, his family prays for justice for this father of two.
Desiree Reneau, Loren's Sister
"Loren is not a bad person. He is a good father, a loving brother, and a loving son. His life was almost taken away from him unfairly and I hope that whosoever did it, that the police is able to find them and give us justice because he is on the hospital bed fighting for his life."
Jules Vasquez,
Do you have any idea who or why someone would do this to him?
Desiree Reneau,
"Well my brother is not a troublesome person and he doesn't hang out. He is not a gangbanger, he is not from the ghetto world, and he has children who he is going through a custody battle for. Any number could play and it could be anybody's game."
And that bitter custody battle had come to be a prominent feature in this young man's life but even so, his sister says this single parent tried to maintain a regular schedule for his two sons.
Desiree Reneau,
"His routine is from home to work and from work to home because he is a single parent taking care of his children on his own along with their nanny who does the babysitting when he is at work and he picks up his children, gets them home, he prepares them for school; he does everything the mother should be doing while she is elsewhere living her life."
Now those sons are with their mother as this father fights desperately for life and machines keep him alive.
Police have identified a suspect, but that person has not yet been detained for questioning. Police would not speculate on a motive at this time.
