Brother says case of “mistaken identity”
Reynold Michael, aka “Ganja”, 21, is the City’s latest murder victim after he was shot to death on West Collet Canal this morning.
Michael lived over the canal on Mex Avenue, just down the street from St. John’s Primary School.
Sometime around 11:00 a.m., Michael, no stranger to the law, met his fate when two gunmen on bicycles rode up next to him at the corner of West Collet Canal and Mex Avenue, where he was buying at a shop across the bridge that connects the two sides of the canal.
Michael was shot several times; reports range from three to six gunshots, most of them in the head.
The attackers, we are told, escaped down to Fairweather Street after the execution.
When Amandala arrived on the scene this morning, police were at work gathering what evidence they could find after a rainstorm struck the area a few minutes earlier.
Michael had in two previous incidents been shot at and injured.
This evening, Amandala caught up with Reynold’s brother, Orin, and his mother at their residence on Mex Avenue.
Orin Michael told us he believes that it was he that the gunmen wanted this morning, but they mistakenly shot his brother instead. He did not venture to give an explanation as to why.
Michael’s death was the talk of the area for much of today, but the family has so far restrained their emotions. They preferred to talk to us instead about what Reynold had been planning to do with his life – start an upholstery business, refurbishing furniture and making pillows, out of his home. He had even gotten a grant from the Youth Business Trust to help him along.
According to Orin, Reynold, despite his reputation in the press, was not a troublemaker and recently had kept mostly to himself, preferring to hang out on the block.
“I am more of a troublemaker than my brother was,” Orin said of Reynold, adding that he too has since changed his life and gotten a job.
Reynold’s mother, who did not give us her name, told us that she just wants to bury her son and try to get on with life.
“Maybe,” she reasoned, “his loss – my loss – will be my gain through God.”
Police say they are looking for two suspects at this time.