The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

THE family of a 42-year-old man who was shot dead on Wednesday night on the street where he had lived all his life believe his death was simply a case of being in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Renaldo Curry was among a group of people gathered near a food establishment on John Road when two masked men dressed in dark clothing approached on a scooter from the direction of Market Street and opened fire, police said. The gunmen fled west towards Baillou Hill Road.

Curry was shot several times and died at the scene. A second man, 22, was shot in the lower back and taken to hospital, where police said he was in critical condition and undergoing surgery.

His sister, Desiree Curry, said the family had never known him to be involved in criminal activity, gang disputes or threats, and believed he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"We just need them to be held accountable," Ms Curry said. "He's an innocent man. They took him from his family, his kids."

"He was born and raised through here all of his life," she said. He would often stop to talk with the people he had grown up with, she said.

Police said ShotSpotter technology detected multiple gunshots in the eastern area of John Road around 11.30pm. Officers found Curry unresponsive with multiple gunshot injuries, and Emergency Medical Services confirmed he had no vital signs.

Ms Curry described her brother as a "jack of all trades" who worked as a security guard and also did carpentry. Above all, she said, he was a family man devoted to his two sons, aged 14 and four. Both boys had lived with him at times, and he helped them with their homework and made sure they had what they needed.

"He was a mother and a father," she said.

The boys were devastated, she said.

"He loved those boys; those two boys were his heart," Ms Curry said.

She said she was at work when she began receiving missed calls from relatives. A nephew told her that her brother had been killed, another relative said he had been shot, and she learned he had been fatally wounded only when she reached the family home.

Ms Curry said the six siblings were raised closely by their mother and stayed connected as adults. She spoke with her brother almost every day through their family group and regularly sent him Bible scriptures and words of encouragement. She last spoke with him on Tuesday. He spent much of Wednesday with other relatives before collecting his son from school, she said.

She said the family was struggling to accept that a man who had been part of their lives for more than four decades had been killed so suddenly.

Ms Curry said: "We want him to be remembered for the person that everybody says to you: calm, quiet, loving, caring, supportive."

"He loved to sing. He loved to dance, and that's what he was. He was happy," she said.

She worried the shooting could have claimed someone else's life.

Ms Curry said: "He could have had his children walking with him and just happened to say, 'Let me stop there.' You know, it could have been somebody else. It could have been anybody."

"Life is just so unfair, and the senseless killing has to stop," she said. "It has to stop."