Baby survives to see first birthday after shot in the head

JAMAICA - In May this year when six-month-old Javier Wilson was shot in the head by callous gunmen, his parents were distraught by the experience. However, they remained optimistic that he would survive. Yesterday, they are most ecstatic as Javier is celebrating his first birthday. “Sometimes in life we wait to see water get turn into wine, and not look at the simple miracle that happen in our lives on a day-to-day basis,” the boy’s father, Javar Wilson, reasoned on Sunday when the Jamaica Observer visited their home in Kingston. “He is a blessing. Each time I look at him I look at what God is able to do; so whenever I buck up on any situation that seems big, that seems strong, that seems like it is going to overpower me, I can just look at Javier to say that God is still a good God, that He did it already, and He will do it again,” Wilson said. A day before Jamaica observed Labour Day, Wilson dropped off Javier at his grandmother’s house on Ramsay Road off Maxfield Avenue. Shortly after, gunshots echoed through the community during a feud between Sunlight Street, Zimbabwe, and Ramsay Road gangsters. Twenty minutes after the smoke cleared, Wilson, who was on his way to work, was summoned back to the troubled Kingston community where he was born and raised. Wilson wept as he stood on Hope Street, metres away from where his son, mother, and a man were shot by the gunmen. The Kingston Western police told the Observer then that the shooting was a result of a gang feud in the area. The police had reported that men who were travelling in a white Nissan Tiida motor car alighted from the vehicle and fired gunshots. The injured were taken to Kingston Public Hospital (KPH). The baby was later transferred to Bustamante Hospital for Children and was admitted for three weeks. When the Observer visited the community at the time, angry residents claimed the police were not doing enough, while others wept. Some residents later blocked a section of Maxfield Avenue to protest against the shooting.

(Stabroek News)