‘He was never in trouble’: Aunt grieves pump attendant who has fractured skull after shooting
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The aunt of the 17-year-old boy shot in a brazen attack at South Beach Esso Gas Station said he would not return to work at the service station after the traumatic experience.
“He [has] never been in trouble,” Tunyia Rolle said of her nephew Demetrio Forbes.
Rolle, a nurse and part-time worker at the gas station was not expecting to witness the attack on her nephew and to use her medical skills on site.
She recalled the severe bleeding and her desperate attempts to save him.
“The only thing I coulda do is remain calm… so I decided to remain calm and try to do my best to keep him talking and keep him alert,” she told The Tribune.
“He wasn’t aware of what was going on. He didn’t even know he got shot. I keep him talking and letting him ask God for forgiveness.”
Widely shared CCTV footage showed a lone gunman approaching the teen around 8 pm on Tuesday, shooting him in the head and running off to a waiting vehicle.
The suspect remains at large.
Young Forbes is suffering from a fractured skull, but is alert and talking, his aunt said.
“I know they say they may have to transfer him to ICU and give him some medication for the swelling of the brain because the brain isn’t really damaged.
“It’s just a bruise, and they don’t even want to do surgery to do damage to the brain. So they’re just watching it for a little while to see how the brain is going to heal on its own.”
Though police have not revealed a possible motive for the brazen shooting, Rolle believes Forbes was not the intended target.
“He [has] never been in trouble, and just Friday he messaged me, and he was like, ‘I want to go to BTVI to do mechanic,’ so I told him Wednesday I’m off, and we could see and get the forms and stuff,” she said.
The shooting comes amidst a flurry of homicides and gun violence in the country which have resulted in calls for the implementation of stiffer penalties for criminals.
Just Wednesday, Prime Minister Philip Davis announced a change to the Bail Act, an attempt to curb violence by revoking bail if a suspect commits a second offence.
