Murder victim was recent P2P graduate
Murder victim David Ebanks with his P2P certificates
(CNS): The latest victim of street violence in West Bay was a very recent graduate of the government’s Passport2Success training programme. David Ebanks, who turned 20 just a few weeks ago, graduated from the young people’s work-ready course at the end of last year. Many messages were posted Saturday on his Facebook page when the news broke that he had been gunned down outside a food stand near to Kelly’s Bar in West Bay.
Police made no arrests Saturday in the shooting, which took place less than 200 yards from the West Bay Police station. There was no confirmation either on whether or not Ebanks’ death was related to the killing of Victor Yates at Super C’s on Watercourse Road on 3 January.
Police have arrested one young man in connection with what was believed to be a related shooting a few days after Yates was killed. In that incident another young West Bay man was shot in the wrist as he got into a car outside a local liquor store. However, no one has been charged.
Senior police have lamented the failure of people to come forward in the murder of Yates and police were unable to supply any descriptions or details about the suspects involved in Friday’s killing.
However, as well as the posts on the young victim’s page, other young people in the district were posting messages and tweets across social media about revenge.
cayman345 you clearly don’t have feelings about no one and I hope if you do have a child that if anything happens like david,that you wouldnt have to read such negatives comments like what you have posted.let the family grieve in piece,no one deserves this…I know it might be hrad for you,but try and have a little kidness in your heart..I will pray for you
Find a way to help out these kids at an early age and help out those kids who are on the wrong path. There are many programs within schools and outside of schools that can help.We all have a duty to help raise the young in our society whether we like it or not.
Sitting on an armchair tutting helps nobody….
Passport2Success and other gov. related scholarship programmes are an easy way to claim you’re “starting fresh” or “finding a better life” however a one year course with a provided stipend (in some cases) is hardly enough reason to say a person is trying to start a better life!
It’s about time EVERYONE here, expats and Caymanians alike, realize that some of these young men just AREN’T ANY GOOD.
The status’ and pictures these men post are proof enough that they should be arrested. It’s unfortunate innocent people like Victor Yates have to become victoms, when some more effort into taking KNOWN criminals off the street could have prevented it.
And please tell me, just what would you do to curb the problem?
Instead condeming him because of photo, get involved to curb this problem with our youth!
With all of his “supposed gangster” image, it’s possible he was not the intended target. Wrong place at that wrong time.
Sorry “Anonymous” – not just young black men. I know a very white and blond young man involved in some nefarious activity
Thank you for putting us all straight. We must be grateful. One very white and blond young man, you say. I guess that destroys totally the argument that it is mostly (by a long way) young black men that are involving themselves in gangs in Cayman and wiping each other out, or trying to.
I just read at his step father is a RCIP Chief Inspector. That was disappointing to read. This kid had so much criminal activity going on, posted on open pages of social media and a Royal Cayman Islands Police Chief Inspector didn’t pick up on it.
A lot of young black men (everywhere) grow up, for a time, copying older financially successful role models. Often those role models embrace the thug-life veil because society’s multigenerational undercurrent of racism nudges them in that direction. Not all kids who go through the gangsta-phase stay in it. Who among us didn’t try to be someone we’re not as we figured our lives out? Social media wrongly makes a simple photo taken frivolously a badge of evidence about your lifetime character, for your community to judge. Imagine if your worst moment of personal evolution were captured and published online for the word to judge. This young man would likely have figured his life out. It’s on the police to stop taking the easy road and blaming the community for not coming forward and solving crimes for them… There is no community in LA or NY and miraculously hard crimes get solved. Get warrants, take DNA samples, investigate, search.. Hard work by police will bring the respect of the community and get people to come forward and bring convictions. It’s a shame law enforcement in Cayman has gotten too comfortable leaning on the crutch of the way it operates, and a bigger shame the people they serve do not demand better.
Very well said, indeed!
Informants and information is the key to solving crime, all that CSI stuff on TV is fantasy. Cayman sometimes acts like Sicily, gripped with fear of doing the right thing and the consequences of speaking out, it won’t change. Just use the anonymous channels to speak up.
I wonder if you realized those very lobsters n conch may have been taken during season?
We have people within our community/society which had a past and later themselves back on track to become within society, who seen the value of life. David hung with the wrong crowd in early to late teem years but later realized that didn’t have anything for him. He listened to those that meant to him than those he thought were friends. He enrolled in the passport to success program and then got in to the mechanic school. For a community that supposed to be of christian morals n belief, for those who changed for the better you’re very quick to judge.
I pray that those who have children and wish to post negativity about david and the change he did for the better that your child/ren, niece, nephew, brother or sister don’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time and when you log on to computer or open CNS on your personal device you could handle the negativity that you read knowing the positive change they made.
Our community is following the happenings of the U.S. with everything it does with schools. Our communities are no longer communities but simply a melting pot with violence controlling the flames. We need to get back the basics.
Pray tell which season you are allowed to catch 72 pounds of conch? His Instagram photos are recent – you may think he changed, and can make all the excuses you want, but if you are family you are part of the problem
You take a pile of conch that size at any time and you are breaking the law. And as for the road to Damascus turnaround, he didn’t take down all that gangsta crap off Facebook and Instagram once he reformed? really – you expect people to believe that?
Last time I checked, taking 74 conch in one go is illegal, it does not matter whether it is conch season or not. Its called poaching, plain and simple. Just as bad as these poachers are the restaurants who buy it and I do not know why the DOE does not do something about it. If there was no demand from the restaurants, then there would be no suppliers of illegal amounts of marine life to them.
Hello people!! A human being is shot dead….. He is no longer around to be with his loved ones!! Why are you all so filled with negativity and without compassion for the family? Regardless of what he did in the past he is someone’s child. Please stop this nonsense and let the family have their moment for grieving their loss. Please respect them and stop posting things that will add to the hurt they are already going through. If things are posted on social media just read it and let everybody else read it….. No need to repeat it here. You all are so disgusting. Have a heart. Chhhhh…. This is not solving the crime is it?
Thank you for telling people to stop blaming the victim. And for having a heart. Some of these people disgust me. No one is perfect. I wonder what they would be saying if it was their son, brother, nephew or cousin. SMH.
What can we expect? We the adults shower kids with TV images of killing, easy sex, fast cars and huge amounts of quick money. This is world wide not just Cayman. We only are closer to it than those in big cities. Need to put back family values in the society and not the BS from US TV. This is the result of the rapid importation of greed, I recall the moratorium on Hotel some years back, sadly we pushed it aside and went for Boom now we are trying to avoid Bust. Very sorry for the Kid and his family.
I went to this young mans instagram page and was shocked! Why he wasn’t arrested before I don’t know. He had pictures of guns, weed, 74 lbs of conch …. so many chances for the Police to catch this kid and MAYBE turn his life around. Another disturbing picture was of his passport to success class all flashing gang signs and pretending to hold guns. What in the world!!!!! I would like to know why these kids profiles aren’t being monitored by the school. Any infraction should be grounds for suspension from the program. And we wonder why these kids can’t get jobs!!!! The minute an employer pulls up their FB or instagram page – interview over, in fact interview never given. What is the reference to gazza? Do these kids know where that is and what its about? Looking at this young mans profile was so incredibly sad. Where are his parents??? How did it get this bad? Heartbreaking. Sad. What will the future hold? How do we stop this? WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?????????????????
It’s much easier to simply blame the kid. Parenting and social responsibility by the community is not a cultural norm here, and is therefore difficult to do. As a parent I come under enormous pressure to do everything else but put my kid on the right path, so I understand how this young man could have been lost so easily. Also, no one around here seems to understand the gang problem or how to deal with it. They have been told, but all wants a miracle solution that does not involve effort.
I am a parent too. I am all over social media multiple times a day checking on my son’s postings and his friends postings. Without a doubt if I saw something on social media OR if I found something in his room, in his car, that let me know he was on the wrong path, I would talk to him, try my hardest to turn him around, if it didn’t work, off to Northward he would go, where I could visit him and talk to him and let him be mad at me for turning him in. That is much better than visiting his grave and having the regret of doing nothing. I pray that some of the mothers of these boys decide that is the route to go. No one deserves to bury a child, it goes against nature. Speak up. I know some of the mothers, girlfriends, sisters, brothers know. Speak up before you are standing next a grave wishing you had said something.
And his facebook! He was a very disturbed and troubled child. Who baited about owning a gun, and had wads upon wads of rubber band cash. Smh God help these little boys who consider them selves “bad man”
The Bible clearly makes it know what the authors, “Bollocks & Caymanian” are suffering from. It says, “my people from the lack of knowledge”. I pray that one day, that you or any of your don’t have to go through what our family is having to deal with now.
If we have to judge a person simply by there social medi profiles, we’ll simply be calling them sluts & alcoholics but it wouldn’t be right. You looked at the cover and immediately judged the book.
We once stood united, but right now we’re falling divided as a community and was once our community falls apart society will as well.
Nobody deserves to die like this! Not him and not his potential victims, but lets not give up on our young people or we will all be lost