One hour after the Brannon double murder, shots rang out again on the city's south side and another mother grieved for a dead son. 24-year-old Tyrone Felix was returning from the same concert that spawned the other killing but was shot to the head in an attack that had nothing to do with the Brannon killings. So why was he killed? Alfonso Noble tried to find out.
Alfonso Noble Reporting
This morning Therese Felix, mother of 24-year-old Tyrone Felix walked me to the corner of Gill Street and Faber's Road. At the very corner inside a yard that belongs to a relative of hers, her son's blood remained. She had covered it up with sand but she could still remember he was lying there on Sunday morning- giving her a very grim start to mother's day.
Therese Felix,
"All day my son was in the yard fixing the car, he and the mechanic and his friends. 12:30, minutes to one, he came into my room and I heard him spraying his arm and I didn't know he was going to the City Center. He opened the gate and he went without even telling me anything so I didn't think he was going out. I thought he was going to look for his friends and they would hang out. After he left there, the next time I saw my son was the at the corner of the lane lying face up.
Somebody shot him execution style because if you didn't look good you wouldn't it was a bullet hole because it entered from the back of his head, I don't know if it is the right or the left, I more feel like it is left, I don't remember. You had to look because I looked and I didn't any big hole, it was a little hole. Somebody came and told my son that Shabba got shot just now and we jumped up. I ran out there and we met him face up.
If you meet you face up I wouldn't mind because I know he wouldn't hold down his hand and he would have gotten more than one shot. They shot him from behind. He had a gun and shot my son from the back, my son was defenseless. I know it will be an unsolved murder but whoever they hold, nothing will come out of it. They got their day too. They killed my son just like that and they don't know when their turn will come. They will have to look behind their back now. I don't like how they made it go that kind of way, oh no.
According to understanding, the person who killed him wasn't alone. He came in a Beckville. The vehicle waited for him in the open lot on Allan Pitts Crescent at the corner and my son was running come down Faber's Road, he had just left my nephew, and he was coming down Faber's Road coming home. He already turned down Gill Street so all I could say is that the person was in the yard, they came up from behind him sudden and freezed him. He couldn't face him front on. I didn't know he did it from behind because my son didn't have a gun, he didn't have to shoot him in the back of his head."
Therese says her son was coming home sometime around 4 on Sunday morning. He was jogging up towards Gill Street when a gunman who is presumed to have been hiding out in the empty lot at the corner of Gill and Faber's road sneaked up on Tyrone and shot him once to the back of the head. Today this mother who lost on of five children on Mother's Day is keeping strong despite the notoriety that precedes her name.
Therese Felix,
"Felix is Felix but not all Felix are bad. I didn't raise my pickney that kind of way. I am not saying my pickey good because he doesn't have any police record but I've had problems between him and the police sometime, I thin it was in 1999 or 2000. When your pickney reaches a certain age, you can only talk to them because I won't beat them up or nothing because he already reached that age and I did the best I could. He had friends yes. He had a jobs yes. He was working at Audit Department as a messenger up the time of his death.
The hang out part, no matter what you do, you can't stop that because they will have friends, that is no maybe, they'll have friends. You might not like some of their friends, you could only talk to them. The way how it went, I don't like the way it went. My son was already entering to come home. I wouldn't mind if they met him farther from home or shoot him or whatever. The part which hurts me is that he waited for my son. The person who killed him, who the street talking is saying and the information I got, 'cause I don't wait on police for information, my son died yesterday morning at 4 o'clock. The police came to the lane, I don't know who called them, but we reached at the lane before them. When the police came to the lane they didn't pick up my son or nothing. The neighbor who came to tell us Tyrone was dead, my son and one of his friends picked up Tyrone and put him in the truck. They said the vehicle went so because one of the police officers said something and he said something about a green vehicle. Instead of chasing the green vehicle, they didn't chase any green vehicle, they went and chased the vehicle which was taking my son to the hospital. My son was already dead."
And because of his death Therese says that the way things are going and because she has experienced it for herself on Sunday morning, there is very little that can be done. She is not hopeless however and realizes that her justice will come somehow.
Therese Felix,
"In these times now once you have children you can't point fingers because everybody have friends and he might be hanging out with this one and that one and that one has problems and because they can't catch that one so they catch him. I don't know. Tyrone was my second son. I have a son older than Tyrone. I have four left, I had five and right now I am left with four. I don't fear because once you show them you fear, you are weak. I won't make them beat me. I will talk for the next one them and I have talked for them before. The way the streets is going, it could be anyone's day. So you just can't say it is good for she or she because you don't know when your turn will come. I am trying to be strong because I have them. I can't be crying, it hurts me because my son is 24."
Too young to die in such a heartless manner just paces from reaching home.
Police have not made any arrests.
