Construction worker killed in Sunday City shooting
Gunshots rang out again on Sunday night and in the aftermath nervous residents emerged from their homes to discover that yet another young man had been fatally wounded. And as I found out today, the motive behind the cold-blooded killing may be a son’s revenge for an assault on his father.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
This afternoon, twenty-year old Joseph Bishop was formally charged for the murder of thirty year old construction worker Julian Anthony Serrano, a.k.a. “Buff”. Police investigations reveal that around nine forty-five on Sunday night, the victim was talking with a group of friends on Guerrero Street when a bicyclist rode up to them and fired several shots at Serrano. The bullets struck Serrano twice in the chest and in his lower back. The badly bleeding man managed to run onto Faber’s Road before he finally collapsed. Eyewitnesses later described the shooter as a man concealing the lower part of his face with a red rag and wearing a cap, white t–shirt and jeans pants. Police have linked the accused to the crime through his father. On Thursday, Serrano punched his employer Joel Bishop, Joseph’s dad.
Julia Blanco, Mother of Murder Victim
“I never expect this fi happen cause he call the police and then they had him hold up like wah twelve or eighteen hours in there.”
Serrano was detained overnight for hitting the elder Bishop. Blanco says after her son was released from police custody he stayed home until Sunday.
Julia Blanco
“And I tell him okay, like how you done get inna the job problem mek him stay home and then just noh go nowhere and he stayed home up to yesterday because he decide he mi gwine dah Hopkins to my dad.”
But half an hour after he left home, Blanco got the call that her son had been shot and taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.
Julia Blanco
“He was still in the operating room and when the doctor come out them tell me seh he dead.”
At the crime scene police recovered three nine millimetre expended shells. In court Bishop told Chief Magistrate Margaret Gabb that he was at home taking care of his baby girl when the shooting occurred.
Julia Blanco
“When I hear that he knock Mr. Bishop, ih neva surprising to me because dah like something weh the happen over and over and he must ih fed up of it and that’s what caused the problem. But I noh know because them tell we dah Mr. Bishop’s son do the shooting so I noh know if dah revenge he the tek off of my son fi the punch weh he punch ih pa.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“Did he ever say what was the trouble between him and Mr. Bishop?”
Julia Blanco
“Just the way how Mr. Bishop talks to him; he does not like the way he talks because he say he talk to me like wah lee boy ma and ih look like he noh like that part of it.”
“Well, I wish that they would give me justice bout it but if they don’t the good Lord will do it.”
The case against Joseph Bishop has been adjourned until June nineteenth. A woman standing in the group talking to Serrano was also injured, but Rachel Wallace has since been treated and released for a gunshot wound to her wrist.
