Princes Town mother mourns son killed in gun attack

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

In­stead of cel­e­brat­ing Moth­er’s Day, a Princes Town moth­er spent yes­ter­day griev­ing the loss of her son, who was gunned down at their home the day be­fore.

Wip­ing away tears at her St Julien Vil­lage home, Ani­ka Brath­waite strug­gled to un­der­stand why her son, Xavier Braith­waite, 32, the younger of her two chil­dren, was mur­dered.

The fa­ther of two was am­bushed and shot as he ar­rived home af­ter lim­ing with friends around 2.50 am on Sat­ur­day.

Brath­waite said she had mes­saged him just 15 min­utes be­fore, but he did not re­spond. She heard a gun­shot and im­me­di­ate­ly ran out­side.

His slip­per was in the road. She then saw him ly­ing in a neigh­bour’s yard op­po­site their home. He was gasp­ing for breath, and she no­ticed a gun­shot wound near his hip.

Afraid the as­sailants would re­turn, she moved him un­der a near­by car and ran back home to in­form her daugh­ter of what had hap­pened.

“I moved him out of sight. I don’t know if they would pass back, so I pro­tect­ed my son too. So, I took him and I hid him un­der the car.”

While run­ning back to her son, a po­lice jeep stopped, and of­fi­cers took him to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Speak­ing can­did­ly, Brath­waite said her son was a mar­i­jua­na smok­er, but he was a good and hum­ble per­son.

“Every sin­gle body that knows him, trust me, they have noth­ing bad to say about him. Imag­ine every sin­gle body in the neigh­bour­hood took a day off yes­ter­day, no­body didn’t go to work. That’s just to tell you how good he was. Any­body want­i­ng help will know to come in this lit­tle shop here. My son was not a bad boy. He was a ladies’ man.”

She said her son’s two chil­dren, ages 11 and 13, did not live with him, as he and his wife had sep­a­rat­ed more than a year ago.

“Every­body who knows me, I don’t put words in my mouth to say what I say, but my son, he didn’t de­serve that. And that cow­ard, that cow­ard will shoot my son. Don’t wor­ry, the Lord will deal with all of that.”

She said her son op­er­at­ed a par­lour in front of their home, loved to dress and that many peo­ple were en­vi­ous of him.

Brath­waite said Moth­er’s Day will nev­er be the same for her.

“I’m not cel­e­brat­ing Moth­er’s Day. I’m not cook­ing. I don’t have the en­er­gy to do noth­ing. I slept in his room last night and I had to drink and drink to knock out to sleep...It is too hard. I’m not sup­posed to bury my child. He’s sup­posed to bury me.”

She be­lieves some­one who knew her son was in­volved in his death, and even if the po­lice fail to give her jus­tice, she said she would not rest un­til those re­spon­si­ble are ap­pre­hend­ed.