The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

Tribune Staff Reporter

rmajor@tribunemedia.net

POLICE found a man’s lifeless body outside of a building with gunshot wounds early yesterday morning.

According to reports, shortly after 1am, police discovered a man outside of a building on Bahama Avenue off Blue Hill Road with gunshot injuries.

Paramedics were called and attempted to revive the man, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to The Tribune’s records, this incident pushes the murder count to 54 for the year. This came after two men, one of them the brother of Transport Minister Renward Wells, were shot dead in separate incidents hours apart on Sunday while another man died in hospital as a result of a shooting in Grand Bahama on July 7 .

With more than 50 murders for the year, local religious leader Bishop Simeon Hall has urged Bahamians not to be “numb” to murders or accept it as “the new normal”.

The prominent pastor made the call in a press statement in which he said the news of the assault and murder of another person has lost the shock and dismay it caused a few decades ago.

The statement read: “Civilised and well-thinking Bahamians and residents must continue to believe and work for all that can be done to rediscover the beautiful community we once enjoyed - where life was seen as precious from the womb to the grave.

“More than 50 lives have been ended senselessly this year by this demonic culture of murder. The good work of the police notwithstanding, some Bahamians embrace a romance with violence which continues to end in young black men and women being mowed down like animals.”

The statement added: “A demonic culture of deadly violence increases not merely because some are set on criminality, but because of the comfortable, so-called ‘good people’ who remain passively silent or are complicit in criminal activities.”

Bishop Hall said politicians, preachers and appointed public officials who engage in asinine diatribe must be told that they fan the flame of violence, sometimes unwittingly.

“Ignorance leads to fear. Fear leads to hate. And hate is so insidious, that all it lacks is the opportunity to kill.”