Atiba Pantin was no gangster his parents told the media yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre, St James.
The 29-year-old father of two, described as a “hustler”, left his home on Tesheria Street, Diego Martin, on Sunday without saying goodbye to his mother and headed to Laventille where for the third year straight he was hired to carry Witco Desperadoes’ steelpans from the hills to Belmont.
While his voice cracked and his lips trembled, Pantin’s father Rawlin called on the authorities to do more in the fight against crime.
Both Rawlin and his wife, Ruth, spoke of their son as being saintly. The couple said Pantin was the type of young man that would have done anything to earn an honest dollar. Rawlin said the only vice his son had was smoking marijuana on his birthday.
“He wasn’t in any gang. The only thing my son was in as a big man would smoke a ganja for his birthday. He was everybody’s darling on the street. People who I barely know coming and passing by me last night for the wake and crying like it was them child,” Pantin said of his son.
A grieving Ruth said: “He was Just on a job. He was in the back. Is work he went to work. He was the assistant cook for me. New Year’s (Day) is our big bash and everybody does come down. I just have to tell him what and he would say this is the way I doing it. He didn’t deserve to die like that at all.”
According to police, around 11 am on Sunday Pantin, who was hired by a contractor, was moving pan racks along with four other men when they were shot at.
Chavez Best, the driver who employed Pantin, was also shot in the upper right side of his body.
In 2009 after being faced with high crime and violence in the Laventille community the steelband fled from its panyard’s Auditorium and Theatre Centre, Laventille, to practise in Belmont for the Panorama competition. Since then every year they move their equipment from Laventille to Belmont where it is safer for both the panmen and the supporters.