Family members: killing of Evans part of a drawn- out dispute

Candis Lee, the girlfriend of the man murdered in Layou on Saturday, says that his death stems from “a long train of corruption”.{{more}}

“It’s been a while since they harassing him,” she told SEARCHLIGHT yesterday of the men she believes shot and killed 33-year-old Evans Lynch.

“If he walk where they live, … they figure Evans coming to do them something. But Layou is for everybody. You can walk anywhere, as long and you don’t trouble anybody,” she further said.

“But because them shoot him, they have this thing in they head that he trying to get back to them,” Lee, Evans’ girlfriend of one and half years, added.

She was referring to the four occasions on which Evans was shot previously.

“Is a changed life Evans was living for,” she, however, said.

And Verene Lynch also told SEARCHLIGHT, in a separate interview yesterday, that the killing of her son is part of a drawn-out dispute.

However, while Verene, Lee, Evans’ ex-girlfriend Angela Quashie and sister Leona Lynch talk about the dispute, they say they do not know how it started.

“I don’t know what going on,” Verene told SEARCHLIGHT.

But the feud has virtually robbed the 66-year-old mother of seven, a woman who cannot walk and has hypertension and diabetes, of the last of her four sons.

When Verene buries Evans, she will be paying her final respects to the second of her sons who was murdered in Layou.

But she said that she has lost three of her boys, as a third is doing a 30-year prison term, for a murder she said he did not commit and a fourth is estranged from her.

“‘Baby’ gone from me; Kenute gone from me. Ah wha’ me ah go do? Watch ah cry! Watch ah cry! Oh gawd, me ah go suffer,” Verene cried, as she sat in her wheelchair outside a police cordon, as Evans lay dead in the street on Saturday.

The mother was referring to Algornon “Baby” Lynch, 31, who died of a gunshot to the chest on October 30, 2004 in Layou.

The court, on February 24 this year, sentenced Kenute Lynch to life in prison for the murder, in 2007, of Maxwell John. John was shot in back on July 18, 2007 and died on October 16 that year.

The mother told SEARCHLIGHT that Evans on Saturday complained about harassment from two men in the community. “He say to me, ‘Tanty, ah cannot rest for Andy and Billie.’ Me say, ‘Nah worry with them’,” Verene recounted.

She said Evans had complained that the men saw him talking to some girls and asked the girls if they talk to “all dem man ya so”.

“And he say he get angry about what them say to the girl. He say to them, ‘Wha’ alyo want me fuh do? Ah because me nah go thief with alyo?’” Verene said.

She said Evans said he had motioned as if he was going to pelt stones at the men and he laughed when they ran. But Lee said that Evans did pelt the stones at the guys “for them to run, because they were over where his mother live across there.”

And Patrick Sam, Verene’s companion, said that they were at home on Saturday when he heard the first gunshot.

“When I turned down the radio, and then I hear ‘pow’ again and the last one go extra heavy. So I say, ‘Yo sure is not yo son?’” Sam recalled.

He said about 10 minutes later, they got the news that Evans had been murdered.

Asked why when he heard the gunshots he thought Evans had been killed, Sam said:

“Well, through the arguing and they did done plan to kill him, too.”

Sam said one of the men who were reportedly harassing Evans had also threatened him.

“… he end up and tell me I worthwhile dead too … When he meet me he always vex up. … They does call me informer all kind of thing,” Sam said.

And as Sam accompanied SEARCHLIGHT to Evans’ girlfriend’s house, a woman exclaimed “Tek dat! Tek dat! Yo’ nah hear walk way! Yo’ get um good.”

Sam said that the woman is a relative of the man that Evans’ brother Kenute was convicted of killing, and she was celebrating Evans’ death.

Verene said that the young men that Evans complained about were hanging around Evans’ Texier Road house last week.

“The week before, them went right by his gate waiting for him.”

The women told SEARCHLIGHT that Evans was on his way to his mother’s house to take hypertension medication for her when he was killed.

The fisherman had just returned from diving and had gone to his house, where his ex-girlfriend also lives.

Asked if she knew why her sons were killed, Verene said: “Ah don’t know why. All of those that you see there against my kids now.”

But Verene recounted Evans’ survival of one of the gun attacks.

“I couldn’t believe he would have been alive to the day that Andy kill him. He was in so much a critical condition. … This is the fifth time Evans getting shoot. Shooting him, shooting him just so. For what? He said, ‘Tanty, me nah know what a go on’,” Verene said.

“Where he die there, he has bullet in him [from before] because the doctor say he can’t move it. These finger here couldn’t even stretch out,” Verene further said.

“Is four times he go in the hospital with gun shooting. And the fifth time, he stop right there,” Sam added, in reference to the spot where Evans died.

“Ah one gang ah them. They say they name Graveyard Crew. Me nuh know wha’ them mean. Them say them name so,” Verene said of the men who she believes killed her son.

But Quashie, who had a seven-year relationship with Evans, did speak of his violent past.

“When I get in with him, he was in the top of the war in Layou. And I coax him, I coax him; I talk to him, I talk to him until I calm him down and get him out,” she said.

“It had all these guys use to fight against them and when they defend theyself now, everybody have them as the bad guys in Layou. But then, they are the bad guys, but they never kill nobody. They only fight to defend theyself,” she said.

She said Evans had been imprisoned for “defending himself.

“… If you do him anything, he go do yo’ back,” she added.

Quashie said she would miss Evans “in a lot of ways.

“Even though he was seeing somebody else, [I will miss him] in a lot a ways, because he still used to come and give. He used to still pay the bills, even though he wasn’t here as often.”

And Evans’ sister Leona said that persons in the Central Leeward town were “fighting down” her brothers.

“For what, I don’t know. They just fighting them, want to kill them,” she said with a deep sigh.

Asked why she believes that persons wanted to kill her brothers, Leona said:

“I don’t know.

“Because they does interfere with me and I don’t do people nothing. They pass and they throw wud. Say they want all the family have to go down. My bother don’t trouble people unless they trouble him. Me brother didn’t deserve this,” she said. (kentonchance@searchlight.vc)