Barbados Today

Sixty-six-year-old Agatha Taitt is a woman in pain and many unanswered questions.

Still trying to come to grips with the death of her grandson, 18-year-old Michael Omar Edwards, Taitt is puzzled over who would want to take her grandson’s life.

Edwards, who she raised from the time he was six-months-old, was the victim of Thursday’s shooting at Bartlett Tenantry, Sargeant’s Village, Christ Church.

He was home when the two armed masked men reportedly entered the premises and shot him multiple times in the upper torso, before fleeing the area. He was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance for medical attention where he later succumbed to him injuries.

Friday, Taitt was clearly in distress as she repeated over and over that “them kill my grandson, them kill my Michael just so. He gone now. Just so”.

She described Edwards as a good boy who never got into trouble with anyone, insisting she was not saying this simply because Edwards was her grandson.

“He was a good child. He don’t interfere with anyone. If you interfere with him he would tell you what he have to tell you and done with that. He don’t go nowhere and look for trouble. He does go by his friend and back here. Right there where they kill him, he would be there on his phone and watching cartoons,” she said pointing to the spot where he died.

“He would come in ask me, ‘what you have there to eat?’ bathe and go back outside,” she said.

However the grieving granny said the “mouthy” Edwards always stood up for himself no matter what.

“He was very mouthy. He would tell you what he has too. If you were wrong he would tell you you’re wrong. He didn’t even live to see 19 years. They kill my grandson,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

She said the former Graydon Sealy Secondary School student was “a lazy boy, but that’s how boys are.

“He liked to be on his phone, watching TV and eating everything in the house. He was never one to go looking for trouble,” she added.

Taitt, in recounting Thursday’s harrowing experience, said it was one she would not easily forget.

“He went outside then quick so I hear so many bullets went off. I holler for his name and I didn’t hear him. My husband holler for his name and he went outside looking for him. Time I get outside I see my son with my grandson in his hand and I ask, ‘who do that to him?’. He [the son] told me he doesn’t know, someone just came and do that to him.”

“I felt like I was going to die when I saw that. That’s my grandson that I raise from six months to 18 years old. You know how something like that would make you feel? I would feel just like your mother if it was you. That’s how I feel. I started to cry, they call the ambulance and I went to the hospital with him,” she said.

And while the teenager was taken from the scene in a critical condition, his grandmother said, “I thought he would have come out alive. I never thought my grandson would be dead today.”

Edward’s mother, who is St Lucian, is expected to arrive here next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, as investigations continue into his death, police are asking anyone with information that can assist them in their probe to contact Worthing Police Station at 430-7614, or 430-7615; Police Emergency at 211; Crime Stoppers at 1-800 –TIPS (8477); or the nearest police station.
davandrababb@barbadostoday.bb