A quiet, hardworking handyman has been killed in a brazen late-night shooting by masked assailants in the Bahamas, leaving his devastated family searching for justice and grappling with an unspeakable second loss to violent crime. Thirty-five-year-old Dwight “Smily” Benjamin was fatally shot just after 9 p.m. Wednesday as he left a private residence off Father Calnan Road, a side street connected to Market Street, according to local law enforcement accounts.
Police investigations confirm two attackers arrived at the scene on a motor scooter. One suspect, wearing a black jacket and a white face covering, dismounted the vehicle and opened fire directly on Benjamin, striking him multiple times before the pair fled the area. The sudden attack has left Benjamin’s relatives in shock, as they describe the victim as a man who dedicated his life to work and caring for his family, and who never sought conflict with anyone.
Shawn Benjamin, the victim’s grieving father, told local reporters he cannot reconcile why his son was targeted. He said if attackers had been aiming for his other son, he would not have been surprised – but that “not this one.” “My son ain’t that type of person,” Shawn Benjamin explained in an interview. “I have another son. If they say they come for that one, I could believe that, but not this one. I upfront. I grieving right now.”
According to the elder Benjamin, his son was visiting a friend at the time of the attack. When he traveled to the residence to investigate the killing afterward, he was told the attack was almost certainly a case of mistaken identity. “I been hunting,” he said, describing his search for answers in the wake of his son’s death. “I don’t care whoever I come behind. That’s my son. I been hunting. I been up and down the place where they does be.”
Tragically, this killing reopens a devastating old wound for the father of four. Shawn Benjamin already lost his eldest son to gun violence back in 2008, leaving him with just two surviving sons after this latest attack. “I done lose a son. I done know how it feel but this the second one and for unnecessary violence,” he said.
Family members paint a consistent picture of Benjamin as a reserved, family-focused handyman with strong practical skills. He kept mostly to himself, they say, rarely leaving his routine of work and time at home, and was always willing to help relatives with errands, mechanical projects, construction work, and other hands-on tasks.
Shandera Sweeting, Benjamin’s cousin, said the senseless nature of the killing has compounded the family’s pain. “This is why it really hurts a lot,” Ms Sweeting said. “Smily don’t even trouble people. This the first time my family ever had to go through something like this and for a person who don’t even party or any of them things, to do my cousin so dirty.”
She added that the family is still reeling from the recent burial of another relative, making this sudden, violent loss even harder to process. “Something really need to be done with all this reckless killing,” Ms Sweeting urged. “They take away my uncle son. He didn’t deserve that. Smily was a very respectable man.”
According to unofficial murder count records kept by The Tribune, Benjamin’s killing pushes the total number of murders in the country so far this year to 41, highlighting the ongoing crisis of violent gun violence that continues to tear apart communities and families across the nation.