By Tameika Malone
[email protected]
Two days before his 28th birthday, Andre “Smokey” Cummings Jr. was shot dead outside a bar on St. George’s Street early Wednesday morning.
Police reports indicate that at approximately 1:30 a.m. yesterday, the deceased and other persons were in the bar owned by Leston “Young Destroyer” Jacobs when two men dressed in dark clothing emerged from a vehicle and started firing shots. The occupants of the bar fled the scene.
Cummings Jr. collapsed not far from the bar. After the shooting, he was discovered lying on his back in a pool of blood.
Police are acting on the belief that the killing may be a reprisal of last week’s shooting death of Babu Jardine in Point.
The news of Cummings’ death has left his live-in girlfriend Lauraine Romelda Frederick devastated and confused.
A distraught Frederick said the death of her loved one was the most tragic news she could receive for her birthday.
“He can’t do this to me. Today is my birthday and he promised he was coming back. He said he had a surprise gift for me, but it was too early to give me, I had to wait a few more hours,” Frederick said before breaking down in tears.
She explained that Cummings Jr. was an excellent father to their one-year-old son, Malachi Cummings. She added that he was the father figure and financial provider to her three-year-old daughter, Naveah Frederick, who he stepped in to raise from since she was a newborn.
Frederick struggled to fight back tears when talking about the man she said had matured significantly when he became a father.
“He just can’t leave me now. My boat is overloaded and I’m adrift in the middle of the sea. He won’t leave me and not like this. I don’t care what anyone said, he is somewhere, and he will come home. He asked for lentils soup, I made it and it is right there on the table waiting for him,” she said solemnly.
Describing the last time she saw Cummings Jr. alive, Frederick said he was standing in the street outside their St. Johns Street home, provoking her after he and his son were playing and the baby punched him in the mouth and burst his lip.
She said he expressed his love for her before walking away after 10 p.m.
Meanwhile, Andre Cummings Sr. was overcome with grief when OBSERVER media visited his Hanns Street, Villa home, yesterday. Sharon Cummings was too devastated to entertain her son’s bereaved friends and family.
Cummings Sr. and his son’s aunt Jefflyn Lespoir sat on the porch meeting with friends and relatives.
The third of his father’s children, the 27-year-old who is originally from Litchfield Village, West Coast Berbice, migrated here at the age of six.
“They supposed to bury me. No parent is supposed to bury his child,” Cummings Sr. said. “A car came and [blew the horn] someone shouted Smokey got shot and I thought it was him and his drunk friends. But, when I got there I didn’t expect that. I identified him,” Cummings Sr. said.
The father said he arrived on the scene and met his son’s body sprawled in the street.
“Things happen, we can’t ask God why. No one can ever get accustomed to someone dying and especially under these circumstances. I’m not saying that I’m not broken, but, I just can’t break down,” he said.
Lespoir wept, “It was just down four doors away from where I live. I heard five shots, and never did I imagine it would be him. He kept saying, aunty, ‘I go come look for you,’ and that was Monday.”
He was last employed as a painter at a Hodges Bay property.
Police said at the time of his death, Cummings Jr. was on bail for a shooting incident which occurred last year.
