Sascha Wilson
A 51-year-old woman spent yesterday morning washing down blood after her son was gunned down at an apartment building in San Fernando not far from her home.
Holding his slippers in her hand as she returned to her Cocoyea Village home yesterday, Karlene Eccles told reporters her son Paul Eccles, 26, did not deserve to be killed in such a gruesome way.
Eccles, 51, was with her son when he took his last breath on the ground on Tuesday night.
“I would never ever be normal again for what I saw last night. It will stay in my head and I will never ever be a normal person anymore,” she lamented.
Police said Paul was in the yard at Dal Keith Road, Cocoyea Village, when he was shot multiple times. Investigators were told that the shooter escaped in a car. Several spent shells and live rounds of 9 mm ammunition were found at the scene.
Eccles explained that Paul, a construction worker, used to live in one of the apartments with the mother of his children. The children are five, three, and two years old. However, she said he had a fall out with his girlfriend and moved in with her (Eccles) last weekend.
But sometime after 7 pm he told her that he was going to the apartment to do some cleaning and he would return home afterwards.
However, Eccles said around 9 pm she was sitting in her living room when she heard gunshots. She said she immediately knew something as wrong and she called a tenant living in the apartment she confirmed that the gunshots came from the apartment building. The person told her that her son was outside, but she was afraid to open the door to look for him.
Paul Eccles
While Eccles was changing her clothes to find her son, someone called to say that her son was dead. When she ran to the apartment building, she saw Paul lying alone on the ground near a drain. He was bareback and she saw blood on his stomach and lower body and several wounds about his body including a hole in his face.
“He was still breathing at that point in time. He is a strong guy so I know whoever they really pump bullets because when the police came is spent shells. So is like they shoot him close range.”
Eccles did not know why someone would want to kill her son. “I trying to understand why they kill him so gruesome they did not have to kill him so gruesome they had no right. If you see the condition they leave my son in…"
She admitted that her son had two pending matters before the court, including robbery-related offences from 2016 and a 2020 firearm offence.
However, she said after her son spent nine months in custody before she posted his bail in 2020, he took a decision to change his life and he was going to plead guilty to the 2016 matter which is being to be heard next month.
Told that the police believes his murder was drug-related, she said, “As soon as somebody get kill by bullets the first thing they say is drug-related, they need to do their job.”
While she suffered the loss of her parents and a sister in the last two years, she said there was no pain like losing a child. Lamenting that there was too much gun violence in the country, she said she never thought it would reach her doorstep.
“I would like to get justice because at the end of the day it did not have to go down like that. Whoever it is God be with them because God don’t sleep. If I don’t get justice God will get justice for me,” she added. Officers of the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region 3 are investigating.
