A quiet evening of community gathering turned into a deadly tragedy on Wednesday night in Barbados’ Chapman Lane neighborhood, when an unidentified gunman opened fire on a group of men watching a basketball final, leaving one dead and three others wounded. The deadly incident has shaken a community that had only recently made significant progress in reducing violent crime, leaving local residents and community leaders calling for urgent collective action to curb rising gun violence across the country.
Local resident Natasha Hewitt, who has lived her entire life in Chapman Lane, summed up the senseless attack with a simple, somber observation: “Wrong place, wrong time.” According to police records, authorities received an anonymous emergency call at 8:46 p.m. reporting a shooting and a man suffering from gunshot bleeding in the St. Michael neighborhood. Witness accounts confirm a group of men had assembled near a local shop on Third Avenue to watch the widely anticipated basketball championship game when the attacker walked up and fired multiple rounds into the crowd.
The victim, 45-year-old Delon Covell Asgill from West Terrace, St. James, was pronounced dead at the scene. Three other men suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds: two were rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance, while the third was transported to the facility by private vehicle. Hewitt, who was inside her home talking to her son about gun violence when the attack unfolded, recalled the sudden burst of gunfire that shattered the calm of the evening. “I just hear pak-pak. I said, they cleaning, they testing and then I hear a string of shots, I tell my child no, that ain’t testing. That is death,” she described, adding that the shooting was the closest violent incident she has ever experienced, leaving her deeply shaken. She lives just a short distance from the attack site.
Hewitt noted that one of the injured men is like an older brother to her, while a second victim rarely socializes in the area and only came out to enjoy the championship game. The tragedy drove home a terrifying reality for the long-time resident: innocent bystanders can become victims of gun violence at any moment. “My son does work, he could have been coming home and get what they get. I gotta watch myself and my children,” she said. While the area has a nearby police outpost, Hewitt acknowledged the attack unfolded so quickly that officers could not have intervened in time. “What much so them could do, the police is only human, they got them family too,” she added. By Thursday morning, the blood from the scene had been washed away, but the emotional impact of the killing remained palpable for residents. “Too much innocent people getting killed,” Hewitt said.
Long before the shooting, Chapman Lane had a well-earned reputation as a crime hotspot in Barbados, but Hewitt emphasized that public safety in the area had improved dramatically in recent years. “Down here cool down a lot, you know, one time we had a reputation,” she explained. That progress makes this deadly shooting all the more devastating for community leaders like Apostle Dr. Lucille Baird, founder and CEO of Mount Zion’s Missions, who arrived in the neighborhood on Thursday morning to check on local youth involved in her organization’s outreach programs and offer condolences to the community.
Baird launched her organization’s work in Chapman Lane back in 2019, when the area was grappling with a wave of deadly gang violence. “I work with these young men, we came down here in 2019 when they had all the killings, we came down here and started to work. Since then we haven’t had that sort of crime,” she said. Her ministry runs targeted programs to keep local young people engaged in positive activity: participants attend Sunday church services, and work on a community farm during the summer months, earning wages for their labor while staying connected to the community. Many of the young men involved in these programs still live in Chapman Lane, and Baird came to Thursday to confirm none of them were harmed in the attack.
The fatal shooting has reinforced Baird’s growing concern that rising gun violence is pushing ordinary Barbados into a state of widespread fear. “It’s really getting to the point where Barbadians are becoming afraid now and when you living in fear, that’s not a healthy society,” she said. She also lamented what she sees as the steady erosion of the close-knit community spirit that once made Barbados a safe place for all residents. “We were a society that used to care and share and walk the streets and felt safe and so on but all of us have to work together, if you see something say something,” Baird urged.
While faith and prayer remain core parts of her ministry’s work, Baird stressed that prayer alone is not enough to turn the tide of gun violence. “As a pastor, we keep praying, prayer is not enough, we gotta have action so we want to up and increase the programmes in this areas so we can try to avoid what’s happening in these communities,” she explained. Baird said her organization plans to expand existing community programs and make them more responsive to the needs of local young people, including asking the youth themselves for input on what programming would best serve their goals. “Whatever we can do to assist them,” she said.
As of Thursday, law enforcement officials have not made any arrests in connection with the shooting, and detectives continue to pursue leads and interview witnesses to identify the attacker and motive.