Son of trade unionist killed in Sangre Chiquito shooting

The brazen day­light shoot­ing cap­tured on video and cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia in San­gre Chiq­ui­to on Fri­day has claimed the life of the son of trade union­ist Michael An­nisette.

Mic­ah An­nisette, 31, was shot dead along Shir­van Dri­ve at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 pm on Fri­day. He was a hus­band, a fa­ther of two young chil­dren and a twin. He was from Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

“Very young life. I think the first one is about four years there, about the next one could be around a year or a half or there­abouts… It’s un­for­tu­nate. It’s a young life,” said the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al.

Dur­ing a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia, An­nisette re­mem­bered his son as a bright young man who could have been any­thing he chose to be, but ad­mit­ted there were things he did not like, as well as things about him that he ap­pre­ci­at­ed and wel­comed.

“ I’m not go­ing to be like oth­er par­ents and just say he was a per­fect per­son. No, he was not a per­fect per­son, but he had his good and he had his bad. It’s like a scale,” he ex­plained.

The video footage shows a white Toy­ota Axio, with the dri­ver and three oc­cu­pants, be­ing ap­proached by gun­men in an on­com­ing ve­hi­cle. The dri­ver re­versed on­to a com­pound, and an oc­cu­pant at­tempt­ed to run to safe­ty.

How­ev­er, Mic­ah was killed, and the two oth­ers in­jured were iden­ti­fied as Akeil King, 23, al­so of Mal­abar, and Sher­win Ross, 44, of North Man­zanil­la.

An­nisette said an au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed on Mon­day, af­ter which fu­ner­al arrange­ments will be made. He added that crime has to do with each and every one of us.

“It’s like a man in the mir­ror,” he said.

He added that he has ac­cept­ed his son’s killing and has al­ready for­giv­en his at­tack­ers.

“That is some­thing that you can’t ex­plain, you can’t un­der­stand, but it’s part of a jour­ney in this phys­i­cal world… I have learned in this world to ac­cept things that you have no con­trol over… I still give praise to every­body who com­mit­ted the acts. They are hu­man be­ings,” he said.

How­ev­er, he hopes they will come to the re­al­i­sa­tion that life is im­por­tant. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that no ar­rests have been made and po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.