By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

A POPULAR DJ who feared for his safety after filing a police complaint to help a victim of a rape incident, was later shot and died over the weekend after months of suffering.

Arthur Wilson was left paralysed in his lower limbs after he was shot twice in the head and once in the chest on August 28, 2024, while standing outside a building on Young Street.

Earlier this year, he told the press he was shot shortly after filing a police complaint as part of efforts to help a rape victim.

His mother, Alethia Ferguson-Cunningham, said yesterday that her son knew the perpetrators of the rape attack and feared for his life after receiving repeated threats.

She said the police were not sufficiently responsive to their detailed concerns, and her son continued fearing for his life even after surviving the shooting initially.

She said her son spent his final moments in and out of the hospital.

After he had developed a stage four bedsore and was told he may never walk again, his family launched a GoFundMe to support his recovery.

The GoFundMe campaign failed to raise enough funds; her family did not arrange to airlift her son to Cuba for treatment as planned.

“We was his hands and foot,” she said, explaining the care she gave him after the shooting, which resulted in him losing half of his skill.

He wore a blue protective helmet after his medical procedure. His mother wore his helmet during yesterday’s interview and explained that another piece of her son’s skull was placed in his abdomen to be preserved until it could be reattached.

She said one morning, a bullet inside him shifted, and he began having trouble breathing.

“I tell him ‘hold on,’ and he said, ‘mummy, don’t move your hand’,” she recalled. She said doctors at the hospital told him the issue was life-threatening, and her son complained about pain until he could take no more.

During his interview with Our News last month, Wilson recalled praying to God to keep him alive after the shooting and credited his mother for helping him pull through.

Through tears, his mother remembered how hard her son, the oldest of her six children, fought to stay alive.

While expressing gratitude for the doctors’ efforts to save her son, she also conveyed deep frustration with aspects of his treatment. Her dismay accelerated when she learned he was scheduled for a February surgery to reattach his skull — only to be told the skull was too small for the procedure, necessitating a transfer to Doctor’s Hospital. She said many lives could be saved through proper interventions but found the exorbitant costs appalling. 

She emphasised that her son was not a gangster.

“He would give you the shirt off his back, and if he don’t know you and if you don’t have no food, he’d cut that plate in half, and he’d share that with you,” she said.

Chief Superintendent Sheria King, the police press liaison, did not respond to the mother’s allegation about officers’ failure to properly react to the man’s concerns about his safety but said police would meet with them and investigate the matter.

Police had reported last year’s incident as a double shooting, with two men shot. The Tribune had reported that a 22-year-old man was arraigned concerning the case.