Kevon Felmine

Had Ste Madeleine fa­ther, Dar­ryl "Mil­lion" Bap­tiste heed­ed the ad­vice of his com­mon-law wife to stay away from work, he might have avoid­ed the gun­men who killed him on Tues­day.Bap­tiste, 38, a se­cu­ri­ty guard at Lucky 7 Bar, St Clement Junc­tion, Ste Made­line, was gunned down by a group of men, who po­lice sus­pect­ed had an al­ter­ca­tion with him ear­li­er in the day.Just an hour be­fore he was killed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters that de­spite re­ports that se­ri­ous crimes was down, the homi­cide rate was not.

The mur­der toll as of yes­ter­day stood at 188, av­er­ag­ing just over one mur­der ar day. Last year's mur­der toll was 407 with 169 cit­i­zens be­ing killed by June 5, 2013.Re­ports stat­ed that around 9.15 pm, Bap­tiste was on du­ty when a group of men en­tered the bar and shot him.Em­ploy­ees scam­pered for cov­er as the men es­caped along the Na­pari­ma/Ma­yaro Road. He was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he died de­spite doc­tors' ef­forts.

A team of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing ASP Mo­hammed, In­sp Ga­jad­har, In­sp Ramkhelawan, Sgt Ramjug and Sgt Prescott, re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing and searched the area. Up the yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, no one was held.Speak­ing at their Tar­o­dale Hill home yes­ter­day, Bap­tiste's wife, Sal­isha Young, said he had been suf­fer­ing with the flu for the past three days and de­spite plead­ing with him to stay home and rest, he went to work.

She said: "He had the cold so I told him to stay home yes­ter­day morn­ing. I said look how you have a fever but he said he had to go to work."Re­call­ing the mo­ments lead­ing up to his death, Young said she had bought a meal of roast­ed pork and noo­dles and had just dropped it off for him at the bar.While walk­ing home, she said she called him again to ask if he need­ed any­thing else be­fore she went to the wake for 17-year-old Michael Miguel who was mur­dered on Mon­day.

"I called him and I was not get­ting him. I thought he was vex that I was go­ing to the wake."I walked out the road and saw the place closed but I know that he does walk on the oth­er side to come home. I got in a car and when I al­most reached Co­coyea, my daugh­ter called me and told me that Mil­lion just got shot."With tears, she said she rushed to the hos­pi­tal on­ly to be told that he died.De­scrib­ing Bap­tiste as jol­ly and lov­ing, she said there was no rea­son why some­one would have want­ed him dead.

How­ev­er, she said, she was told that dur­ing the day, Bap­tiste had an ar­gu­ment with some­one who was gam­bling at the bar.She said Bap­tiste was sup­posed to be­gin work­ing with his sis­ter, but opt­ed against that when his cur­rent em­ploy­ers of­fered him a pay in­crease.She said they had planned to up­grade their home and open a home busi­ness. How­ev­er, all that has now been can­celled, she added.

Last De­cem­ber Young, a moth­er of six, mourned the lost of her friend and sons' fa­ther, Trevlon "Mustapha" Joseph. Joseph, 51, was shot dead at the cor­ner of Cof­fee Street and Dray­ton Street, San Fer­nan­do, while go­ing to pur­chase din­ner.