Bullets aimed at stray goats strike 12 year-old boy
A 12 year-old boy was hospitalised in stable condition yesterday after a licensed firearm holder apparently shot him while aiming at a herd of stray goats.
Horadio Green was shot in the back and left leg, police said.
Yesterday, police in Riversdale continued to investigate the shooting. They had not filed charges against the shooter, a local property owner. Police said he was shooting at a herd of goats that had reportedly strayed onto his property in the rural St Catherine community.
Roan Henry, the boy’s brother, told the Observer he was near the scene on Hyde Road when the shooting started.
“Horadio was riding his bike along with another kid, they disappeared around a corner, and then suddenly I heard gunshots,” he said.
“I could hear him crying and calling my name, and when I ran to see what had happened I could see blood gushing from his thigh.”
Henry said the man who fired the gun seemed unaware of what had happened.
“I shouted after him that he had hit somebody, and he came from the field where he had been firing from to the road,” he said.
“He claimed he had been firing after a goat, and then he took Horadio and me in his van, but instead of driving us to the hospital, he drove us back to his office. I was very worried about Horadio. He was bleeding a lot.”
A neighbour eventually took the 12 year-old to the Linstead Hospital. He was transferred to the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston.
After the incident, angry Riversdale residents demonstrated on Hyde Road, expressing their sympathy for Horadio, and, according to police, venting their anger against the alleged shooter, whom the Constabulary Communication Network did not identify in its written statement about the incident.
Detective Corporal Pert of the Riversdale Police Station said the protest was “relatively peaceful,” and that police eventually asked demonstrators to leave.