Police say that just after 4 a.m. yesterday, Sunday, two gunmen jumped out of a vehicle and fired into a board house at #36 Zericote Street, approximately one and a half blocks away from the Mahogany Street Police Sub-station.
Approximately nine bullets penetrated the front bedroom of the house, leaving three exit holes at the back of the house. The men fled down Zericote Street in the direction of the Vernon Street intersection.
After the echo of the shots subsided, the dazed family began checking to see if anyone had been hit. The tragedy, of mammoth proportions, did not dawn on them immediately – until the mother turned on the light in her 8-year-old daughter’s room.
Eyannie Nunez, 8, a standard 1 student at All Saints Primary School, was sleeping in her brother’s bed along with one other sibling; she had been hit by one of the bullets, which entered her body under her left armpit. She later succumbed to her injuries, leaving the family grief-stricken and angry, at what everyone we spoke with referred to as “a senseless act of absolute malice.”
Eyannie’s mother, Francine Pitts, spoke about the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death. The grief-stricken mother, fighting tears, relived the experience. We learned that even though it was Eyannie who was shot, it could have easily been her son, who sleeps in the room, or her other daughter sleeping with Eyannie, who was sleeping at the bed foot; Eyannie’s younger sister was sleeping in the bed with her, but at the bed head. The other two children were sleeping in another room.
Francine Pitts: “I am the mother of six children, including Eyannie Nunez, who succumbed to her injuries … I was sleeping in my chair because my oldest son went out with his school friends to the park to watch movies. The mother of one of the children [the school children] brought him home. This was about after 12 a.m. So when he came in, I said, ‘Deshawn, you can go into your room and put your two sisters on my bed, because I am going in my bed.’
“My son said, ‘Mommy, I’m a bit tired so I am going to sleep in your bed.’
“And so I let him; I fell asleep in the chair. That’s when I heard shots ring out. [She said that she heard footsteps in the yard before that, but she thought that someone had just run into the yard and hopped over the fence; she didn’t look out to see who it was.] It never occurred to me that it was actually my house that the shots were intended for.
“I ran to my son; I thought he was in his room. I called out his name, and I said, ‘You heard the shots?’
He said that he didn’t hear them so I told him to get on the floor. I went to his room, and I met Eyannie at the foot of the bed, and she was there lying. So I thought that she was sleeping, so I picked her up and I felt her warmness so I said, ‘Oh my baby, you peed on yourself…Mommy gonna change your clothes.’
“So I put her on her bed in the middle room and that’s when I turned on the light to get underwear now. That’s when I see the [blood] gushing from Eyannie, so right then I stumble with her; I got weak and I fell to the ground. So I run to my son and told him to get up and help me because Eyannie got shot and she is bleeding.…”
She continued to tell us how she told her son to call 911, which he did. She said that she ran to her bedroom and called out for her neighbor. She said that her 11-year-old son [another son apart from the eldest son] tried to keep Eyannie awake by talking to her so that she didn’t pass out.
She said that she went to the front door and shouted for help and that’s when she heard the police mobile arrive. She said that the police then took her eldest son, who had Eyannie in his arms, to the hospital.
Pitts noted that she saw doctors operating on Eyannie under her armpit, the area she guessed the bullet had entered. She said she passed out and someone had to remove her from the operating room. When she came around, she said that the doctor told her that Eyannie was critical, but they would try to do everything they could to get her stabilized.
She said that she sat with her son and started to pray and hope for the best for Eyannie. She said that when the pediatrician and other doctors came out to speak to her, they all looked sad, so she screamed out and ran into the room where Eyannie was. She said that she had to have hallucinated, seeing what she really wanted to see, because she saw Eyannie put up her hand and say, “Mommy, I am OK.”
Pitts said that she then went outside and told her relatives present that Eyannie was okay, but that’s when the nurses and doctor followed her and told her that her daughter was dead, that she didn’t make it.
She went back into the room and saw that Eyannie was dead; her feet felt cold and her skin was blue. She said that she was still insisting that her daughter was alive, but the doctor and nurses assured her they could do no more for Eyannie.
Police say that Eyannie succumbed to her injuries at 6:10 p.m. yesterday.
Pitts said that she doesn’t know why they shot up her house, because she didn’t receive any threats pertaining to possible gun violence. She said that she did receive a threat which her cousin brought to her about a month ago, that someone had intentions of burning down both houses in the yard, as there are two houses in the yard. She said that she sent back a message that whoever had troubled the would-be arsonists didn’t live in the yard, that there were only innocent people living there.
She further commented that her brother, Herman Garbutt, 23, who has had numerous brushes with the law, had moved out of the yard about three or four months ago, and Garbutt may be the only reason that the gunmen would have wanted to shoot up her house. She said that there was no way that she would have had her brother or anyone dangerous in her house, to attract that kind of attention to her children. She said that her mother left Garbutt access to the downstairs, but he only came in the day; he never slept in the yard.
Pitts said that she hoped that anyone who had any problems with her brother would realize that he no longer sleeps in the yard. She says that she doesn’t even communicate or associate in any form with her brother anymore.
The grief-stricken mother said that she and her family are very devastated, hurt and angry that someone would take away her little girl’s life over some “beef” with her brother. Her brother has no children, so she said she doubts that he is even able to feel the pain that she was and is feeling, as she remembered looking at her daughter quietly and gradually slipping away from her.
She said she only has one question to ask the gunmen: “Why did they come and shot up my home early in the morning when we are sleeping? My child was in her bed; she didn’t deserve this.”
She also said that if the gunmen had any conscience, she doesn’t see how they could do this, because it could have been any of their young relatives; she doubted that any one of them would want this for their family.
Pitts described her daughter, Eyannie, as “an angel.” According to her, Eyannie took care of her young siblings, and was a praying child.
Amandala also spoke to Eyannie’s standard 1 teacher, Andrea Grinage, at All Saints Primary School.
Andrea Grinage: “Well, I just got Eyannie on the first of September [2010], and I must say that Eyannie was a bright child; she was very active and she was willing to assist me in anything I wanted to get done… I will say that Eyannie was very friendly; she got along well with the other students in the class…. Eyannie was always willing to help out…. I would just like to say that the teachers and students of All Saints will definitely miss Eyannie Nunez.”
Although Eyannie was the same age as Marquis Mahler who was murdered on July 9, 2010, being the youngest victims in this year to be murdered, she was only the first of four other murder victims to be reported to the police within a span of three hours on Sunday, September 12, 2010. The other three were Everette Lincoln Davis (see story on page 1), Marlon Zelaya (see story on page 6) and Apolonio Hernandez (see story on page 3).