By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

CHURCH goers prayed over a fatally wounded Claudette Capron as she took her last breath after being hit by stray bullets on Tuesday night.

This was the account of Apostle Kevin Grant yesterday as he recalled opening the door of his church at Robinson Road so that Ms Capron and her sister could enter as gunfire rang out in the street.

Mr Grant said he was getting ready to lead his congregation in prayer when those gathered began to hear gunfire.

“We could hear all of the gunshots and everything and I went to inspect it,” he said of the incident. “I opened up the door to let her and her sister in and one of the bullets then went over to the parking lot area and I saw when she fell and then we realised she got hit with one of the stray bullets.

“I beckoned to one of the members and they came out and we went to her immediately and began to pray over her because we were already in prayer and intercession mode and everything.”

“She wasn’t coherent and when we were praying over her, she didn’t say anything, but she was staring until she took her last breath.”

 At the scene of the incident on Tuesday night, Assistant Superintendent of Police Audley Peters told reporters that the woman was hit in her face and chest by stray bullets from a gunman who was firing his weapon at another man on Robinson Road. She was on her way to a prayer meeting. The male victim was also wounded and is in hospital, police said.

Yesterday, ASP Peters said that a 17-year-old male is in custody and assisting police with the investigation. He said police were also searching for three persons of interest.

 The incident left the members of Resurrection Power Kingdom Ministry, where Ms Capron was a member, in complete shock and disbelief, Mr Grant said.

“She was an excellent person, a good individual,” he said. “Good to the community and good to the ministry. She was a very good and upright citizen.

“It was a total shock to the entire church and everything and everyone started to really scream and her sister was inconsolable. That’s my member. She was inside the church with me and we were trying to console her as much as we could.”

 Asked about the killing on the sidelines of an event yesterday, National Security Minister Wayne Munroe said there is no acceptable level of crime.

 “I have the misfortune as minister that when these things happen the police send me briefings on it,” he said. “The briefing (is that it) appears to have been a shoot-out in which this young lady was caught in the middle.

 “Any killing is bad and we’ve reached a point now where the young men don’t seem to have regard, not only for their lives, but the lives of anybody else.

 “There seems to be a descent from standards. Thirty-one years ago, when I came to the Bar, you thought that there was something called street standards where this wouldn’t happen and where you wouldn’t see it happening.

 “The police, as the arraignment in court this week shows, are resolute in when you do these things, catching you and calling you to account. We are also seeking to get strategies from them which they should make plain for the Commissioner’s policing plan 2022 of how we intend to seek to mitigate that from happening.

 “I will wait to see what further resources they require from us for me to go and advocate for and then, of course, we still have the programmes to seek to stop people reaching the point of that depravity where they don’t care.”

 Mr Munroe said parents and the public at large were to blame for what the nation is now seeing from criminals.

 For his part, Mr Grant said Capron’s death highlighted the need for all in the community to come together to fight the scourge of crime.

 “Let me put it this way, what you see there is unresolved conflict resolution and in the community young men don’t know how to resolve it. As far as the regular other crimes we normally have over there but that looks like a retaliation to me from my observation because the guys were on the main road firing shots at each other so it’s some kind of feud that’s going on.

 “We have to reach out to the young men in the community because they are very uneducated. They don’t know how to resolve it and we as the church have to step in along with the police as well.

 “The church has to play their role. We are going to come back and do some evangelism in terms of getting in there to really, really sit down and talk to them and stuff like that because you know the gangs, they are their family.

 “We have some problems in our society and it’ll take the church, the media and the police force, all of us together, to help combat all of these ills.”

 Anyone with information on this incident is asked to call police at 502-9991, Crime Stoppers at 328-TIPS (8477) or the nearest police station.