Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Christo­pher Chris­t­ian, the young live­stock farmer who was killed try­ing to fight off ban­dits at his home in Carlsen Field, did not have a mean bone in his body, his broth­er said in the eu­lo­gy at the fu­ner­al ser­vice yes­ter­day.

Noah Chris­t­ian told mourn­ers at the Mir­a­cle De­liv­er­ance Taber­na­cle that his broth­er was a “warm friend­ly man who made his mark in the world, not with fan­cy ti­tles but by ba­sic good­ness and gen­eros­i­ty of his char­ac­ter and the qual­i­ty of his in­volve­ment with his fel­low man and how he brought out these qual­i­ties in oth­ers.”

Chris­t­ian’s fa­ther, Matthew, who was shot sev­er­al times in the at­tack, was tem­porar­i­ly re­leased from hos­pi­tal to at­tend the fu­ner­al. He was tak­en in­to the church in a wheel­chair and was seen wip­ing away tears.

As he re­count­ed the events of that fate­ful morn­ing, Pas­tor Ar­joon Roop­nar­ine, who of­fi­ci­at­ed at the fu­ner­al ser­vice, asked: “Who’s next?”

Roop­nar­ine said his heart was bro­ken as he con­sid­ered 27-year-old Chris­t­ian as the son he nev­er had. He ex­pressed con­cern that the coun­try is un­der siege and stripped of spir­i­tu­al and fam­i­ly val­ues.

Not­ing that Matthew had in­stilled spir­i­tu­al val­ues in his two sons, Roop­nar­ine said on the morn­ing of the at­tack Chris­t­ian did not have time to read his Bible or have break­fast, as his fa­ther was shot sev­er­al times in the stom­ach, with one of the bul­lets pierc­ing his back.

“As Christo­pher was fight­ing to hold his fa­ther to­geth­er, he said ‘Noah I got shot,’ and he fell in Noah’s arms. In a mat­ter of five sec­onds, his eyes went back. Noah said to me, ‘Pas­tor he is dead.’ He knew he was gone.”

Roop­nar­ine said while it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why Chris­t­ian died, it was im­por­tant to trust in God.

“To­day we mourn and grieve for him. A cou­ple more hours he will be laid to rest but who is next? Who is next in this coun­try? How many fam­i­lies are fac­ing this that we are fac­ing here this morn­ing? But life will con­tin­ue, many of us will for­get but Matthew will not for­get, Lyn­da will not for­get,” he said.

Noah said his broth­er en­joyed work­ing on the farm and shar­ing his knowl­edge of cars with friends and fam­i­ly. He added that he had made their lives rich­er and fuller, but now there is empti­ness, pain con­fu­sion and even anger.

There was no view­ing of the body. Be­fore the bur­ial at the St Mary’s Ceme­tery, the fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion stopped at the house of mourn­ing.