By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

DEBORAH Lockhart said when she last saw her nephew, the country’s latest murder victim, he was heading to church on New Year’s Eve.

Less than 48 hours later, he was chased inside his home on South Beach on Datura Avenue off Oxford Drive and fatally shot multiple times.

The murder, the second for the year, continued the trend of bloodshed that increased during the holiday season.

Ms Lockhart said Garrard Coakley, 31, was a “fun-loving” construction worker and a “family person” who was engaged to be married.

His fiancée was inconsolable at the crime scene yesterday, wailing on the ground.

Ms Lockhart said she messaged her nephew and his brother every day to check on them. They both responded to her texts yesterday morning before one was killed.

“I was just sitting right down to work when my nephew, his uncle call me and say somebody call him and say they shoot up the house, but he really don’t know what happened because he wasn’t home,” she said. “And then it’s about not even ten minutes later the next uncle called me and he said he was outside. I say what happened? He said aunty, Garrad get shoot. So I said okay. So he hesitate, then he said, ‘dead’.”

Assistant Superintendent of Police Markell Pinder said the deceased was known to police but was not being electrically monitored.

“What we can tell you is the deceased, while standing at the back of his residence, was approached by an unknown male armed with a firearm,” she said. “As a result, the deceased was chased on the inside of his home where he was shot multiple times by the assailant.”

Police recovered a firearm and ammunition from the scene.

In the year’s first murder, a man allegedly stabbed his father during an argument at their family home in western New Providence.

Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said yesterday that his administration is doing everything the police have to do to reduce crime.

“We are all distressed by the level of violence in the society, and, yes, it’s trending downward, but it’s not going down fast enough for us, and we continue to put out resources that are necessary to tackle that issue,” he told reporters.

 Meanwhile, National Security Minister Wayne Munroe, during an interview on Eyewitness News’  “Beyond the Headlines“ last night, said he is concerned about the increase in stabbing incidents.

 “The most troubling trend in the murders isn’t really gun-related,” he said. “The most troubling trend in terms of reports that I’ve seen over the last year, upticking, the use of knives.”

 “Why that is so troubling is because you can have a fella who goes out to hunt down his opponent and that’s very deliberate. In a lot of the reports of knife incidents, stabbings, and there are a lot of stabbings that don’t terminate fatally, is persons just cannot manage conflicts so you and I get in a row and instead of just having our row and being done with it, someone produces a knife and there’s a stabbing.”