Tonight, 24-year-old Deandre Adolphus is dead after a street slide execution on Wagner's Lane that's said to have been carried out by someone he knew well.
Adolphus, a new father, had been out of prison less than two months but had already been receiving death threats. His mother says the plan had been to get him out of the country so that he could seek asylum in the United States. Those best-laid plans, however, were dashed this morning when Adolphus was killed on the Lae called "Jump Street."
Cherisse Halsall was on the scene early this morning and brings us the story:
It was about 7:45 this morning when police responded to a shooting at the corner of Wagner's Lane and South Street.
24-year-old Deandre Adolphus had been shot 5 times - 3 times to the head - and was left splayed out across this narrow street.
Adolphus's mother Georgia Curry was the first in her family to arrive on the scene of her son's demise, followed shortly thereafter by Deandre's girlfriend and mother of his child. As you can see from this footage, they were inconsolable:
But Curry is a woman of great strength and by this afternoon she was able to speak to our 7 News team to give us her version of the morning's tragic events.
Georgia Curry, Mother of the deceased
"My son because I get to understand my son and a young man had a hard talk. They were arguing but my son had to go buy fonto when he went around there and the man told him something but my son is a person who won't shut up just like his mother, will not shut up. So my son answered back the young man so. My son called his friend and told him they Bally through here were bullying him but he was surprised to hear that because he and those guys thought they were okay so as I said I don't know what went wrong. So, the young lady said that when my son jumped on his bike to say go they shot him and when. Bally shot him, my son look like he tried to jump off of his bike but he fell off his bike and when he fell off the bike the guy ran over him and finished shooting him again, you understand but at the. The good lord Is up 24-7 and more, so let the good lord do his part. I don't know what went wrong this morning, you understand for me to get the news to say they hurt my baby."
Reporter
"Now, we know that he had just recently come out of prison and was in a rehab program while he was in prison. What was the difference you saw with him when he came out?"
Georgia Curry, Mother of the deceased
"Well my baby he came out but before he came out of prison when I would go and visit him my baby came out with a bible in his hands, one of those little new testaments and I said Pa wow!, although you're back here you really make me still proud of you, you know."
Indeed, Deandre had come a long way from being twice accused of murder in 2017 to emerging from prison two months ago as what - by all accounts - was a changed man.
Virgillo Murillo, Prison C.E.O.
"We have programs for the remanded inmates since 2017 and certainly, the young man participated in the program that dealt with gangs because he was a member of a particular gang, and he took the training course or the rehab program, definitely that's a fact. I always say too that these guys are safer in prison than they are out in society."
Deandre's mother certainly agrees and told us that on more than one occasion she had a hand in sending her own son to prison; she felt it was in his best interest.
Georgia Curry, Mother of the deceased
"Yes, he had his stuff that you say on the street and I the mother would call the police for my own son to show that me as a mother I don't condone SHIT you understand. I would call my officer, where are you? My son is right here hurry go for him, go for him yeah he's XY and Z, I would call the officers for him you feel me and if you have to send him up send him up let him go relax."
And despite all that, she's trying to remember the best in her son. Deandre, the neat freak, Deandre, the dancer and Deandre the father.
Georgia Curry, Mother of the deceased
"I don't want to remember my son as how I saw him this morning. I just want to remember him with the good part of him."
Adolphus was the father of one daughter, Deandra Georgia.
