Tonight, a 30-year-old Kenrick Drysdale is dead following a mid-morning shooting in Dangriga. It happened at his One Love car wash on Commerce street at 09:30. Drysdale had just started his workday when eyewitnesses say that a brazen gunman fired three shots in Drysdale's direction and then ran off toward the Harlem area.
Drysdale was hit to the chest and the lower back and died shortly after. It's a tragedy that's the latest in a string of southern gun violence, one that leaves the public asking what's happening in Griga? Cherisse Halsall has more:
It's the murder that seems to have stepped on the commissioner's tail, and while this incident took place on the northside of Dangriga rather than the south where the Commissioner toured yesterday, it's still true that hours after Willams' southern swing there's been yet another murder in Dangriga.
It started with the Christmas day murder of Errol Gomez but violence hasn't ceased in the cultural capital.
It was just a week ago that Martha Robinson told us about the death of her son Dennis, he just stepped out to buy some Ramen.
And over the weekend another man, Nyle Vasquez, was shot at by someone to whom he supposedly owed money.
And this morning death came for Kenneth Drysdale while he was working at his Commerce Streetcar wash, named One Love
A look into our archives showed that we'd spoken to Drysdale during the first lockdown in April when he complained to us about Dangriga having fallen on hard times.
Kenneth Drysdale - Murder Victim "The pressure is coming down very hard three weeks right now I lock down my place due to this COVID-19. Right now I have house rent to pay, I have a light bill, food is running out, it's not just me who's feeling it. I think the government is supposed to look after the people better because right now a lot of people are taking lick and people are afraid to talk, a lot of people have pride and I have pride too but at the same time I can't just hold in my pride and stay hungry, I have to talk too."
He gave that interview to field reporter Giovanni Brackett who today lamented the loss of a man with such an entrepreneurial spirit.
Giovanni Brackett - Field Reporter "That gentleman like you rightfully described is somebody who was resilient. He was able in a pandemic to muscle and find his way, there's a saying, necessity is the mother of invention and I think the is the epitome of that. To learn now that he's no longer around is really kinda sad. To me to lose somebody as valuable as that for us not to have the safety net that necessary to save that person or the mediation or the intervention, that's very sad that we're losing people like that has the ability and the potential like kinetic energy but it is as society, it is as church, government, it for us to meet people like that and to make changes and transformational changes into their lives that meaningful because that is a solid life that has gone, that's a life that was productive and could have continue to be productive if that wasn't the case."
Apart from being a resilient businessman, Drysdale was well known sin Dangriga for his generosity community minded-ness. Persons we spoke to do not feel he had any gang affiliation and that the crime had to be motivated by some other misunderstanding.
