The police now have another murder case on their hands.
This time around it involves the killing of a Bahamian businessman, Keith Carey.
That he also happened to be a family man signals the fact that today a family grieves, that his circle of friends is seized in terror, and that the wider community is yet again left in a state of numbed horror.
The sad fact is that this kind of thing is now happening with a kind of regularity that suggests that it will continue, regardless.
This is so because we have bred a new brand of Bahamian criminal. This miscreant is the kind of person who has no conscience and little regard for life. In a sense, this man or woman is the type who is devoid of feeling for anyone. They maim and kill because this is simply what they do in search of money.
They will loot, shoot, pillage and maraud as they please, even if they are destroyed in the process. Their view -presumably- is that this is the moral equivalent of acceptable industrial risk.
In the meantime, the bloody beat goes on.
The information that is now coming in speaks of horror piled upon horror, as in the matter involving Keith Carey. For sure, there will unfortunately be other reports from the whirlwind about others who will be gunned down and die.
This sorry state of affairs is evidence that a time-bomb is ticking away in the innards of this society. Urgent action is needed now if tragedy, catastrophe and social meltdown are to be avoided. ‘Urgent Action’ entails far more than earnest police officers being detailed to deliver lunches for little old ladies.
One cynical perspective we have heard suggests that Bahamians in general now know that their ‘number can be called’ whenever they least expect it.
Any number of Bahamian business people have been targeted by faceless gunmen and their feral acolytes. Making matters worse is the fact that these remorseless, cold-hearted men and women are armed to the teeth. These are the ones who have absolutely no compunction when it comes to sending one of their fellow Bahamians to an early grave.
When we were told the bad news that Mr. Carey had been killed, we were left sickened to the stomach.
That he perished the way he did is symptomatic of the sick society that this town of ours has become.
And let there be no mistake about it, this town did not just yesterday become the kind of sick place that it is. This sorry state of affairs has been in the making for very many years.
Some seeds of the current malaise were sown in times past by those men and women who decided that they would deal in drugs and guns. Some other seeds were planted by politicians who failed their constituents. Some wicked seeds were planted by parents who neglected their brood and fail to take responsibility for their wayward children.
We can also add some of this nation’s pastors to the list of those who have planted wicked seeds in this once beloved land of ours. Instead of preaching the unadulterated Word, some of these men and women preach a message that is redolent with talk about how you can get rich quick.
There is also in the mix of wickedness any number of popular forces and sources that encourage the idea that getting-rich-quick is the name of the game. In one extreme formulation, the word is that you should get rich quick or die trying.
We are today absolutely convinced that it is this thirst for instant gratification that pushes so many of our home-grown criminals to that place in mind where they contemplate seizing money from its rightful owners. They want the money and they want it now.
That their victim is a family man and that he worked hard for what he had was quite literally none of their business.
Their business was to take what he had from him. And since he probably knew his victimizers, they thought that they had to kill him.
That is the sum of what happened yesterday on the precincts of The Bank of The Bahamas International on Harrold Road.
When all is said and done, crime will continue to roil Bahamas so long as its leaders in government and civil society neglect to face the fact that yesterday’s neglect, yesterday’s abuse and yesterday’s flirtation with drugs and guns have all returned heavy laden with bitter fruit.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
