By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

HOURS before his body was found in bushes off Marshall Road, Garath Pyfrom, 29, hugged his sister, Monalisa Johnson, tighter than usual.

“He was just so happy and so loving,” she said, recalling when her brother visited her before attending a party Sunday night.

“He hugged me. He gave me this big hug, and I brushed him off. Then when I reached in my room, he hugged me again.”

Ms Johnson said she asked her brother why he was so happy and he replied: “I can’t just love you, Mona?”

She told him she wouldn’t go to a pool party he planned to attend.

“I told him it wasn’t sitting right with my spirit,” she said. “I said I didn’t want to go, let’s sit this one out, but he still gone.”

The next morning, Ms Johnson got an ominous call from her brother’s wife that he did not return home for the night.

She hurried to the location of the party, unprepared for what she found: her brother’s body lying in the grass.

Friends and relatives described Mr Pyfrom yesterday as hardworking, loving and family-oriented, a father of one child with another child on the way.

He was the owner of Customising Creations, a popular shoe business.

Hours before his body was found, police reported that two off-duty officers were shot at at the same location while attending the pool party.

Both officers received gunshot injuries to their arms but were in stable condition.

Chief Superintendent Michael Johnson said investigators would speak to them to understand what happened.

“The area where his body was discovered, there’s no lighting in that area,” he said about the victim. “So, we believe people were unaware that he was actually a victim.”

He said the pool party had between 200 to 300 attendees.

Mr Pyfrom’s death is the 56th murder for the year, according to The Tribune’s records.