OSHANE Campbell’s parents sat quietly on the kerb at their Rae Street address yesterday, grieving for their 24-year-old son who did not make it back home from a nearby tuck shop on Saturday evening.

“He told me that he couldn’t breathe,” his mother, Karen, said slowly, holding her abdomen and rocking back and forth, as if in a daze. “He said to me that I should tell the doctor that he had asthma, and he couldn’t breathe.”

That was the last conversation she had with her third child before doctors at Kingston Public Hospital whisked him away to the operating theatre, where he succumbed to the gunshot damage to his kidney, liver, and spine.

Even as the police arrived yesterday evening to ask both parents to accompany them to the morgue to identify their son’s body, Karen was still in disbelief that he was gone. She said had it not been for the holidays, he would have been at work in Montego Bay.

“He does construction, and he was working down by Montego Bay where the Chinese working on the hotel. He was just here to spend a little time for the holiday,” she said sorrowfully. “The only reason he was by my house yesterday was because he was waiting on the call to go back to work.”

The constabulary’s Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) reports that close to 7:00 pm on Saturday, Campbell and other individuals were at a bar and tuck shop on Tower Street, downtown Kingston, when a car drove up and the occupants opened gunfire. Campbell and a woman were shot and taken to hospital, where the woman remains in stable condition.

Karen said she was watching the evening news when she got the dreadful phone call.

“I didn’t even hear any shots,” she said, shaking her head. “Someone called me and said to me that they heard that Oshane got shot. I called his phone and I wasn’t getting him. The second time I called, a girl answered and I asked her ‘Where is Oshane?’ and she said ‘Are you Oshane’s mom?’, and I said yes. She said ‘He came to the shop and him get shot, and them carry him gone to the hospital…’ ”

Karen said she got to the hospital in time to sign the consent forms for the doctors to operate on him in an attempt to save his life, and because he was able to talk to her earlier, she was optimistic that he would have pulled through.

“When they brought me back up by the theatre, I thought it was because he needed blood or something…” she said, her voice trailing off as she recalled the last time she saw her son alive

“I can’t describe it. I can’t even tell you… It’s not how I would want any mother to see her child,” she said.

Karen described her son, who died leaving children of his own, as good natured.

“From when he was young he was always a jovial child, a child that doesn’t really talk much,” she said through her tears.

Campbell’s father sat quietly, consoling her as she spoke about their child. “He isn’t the type of person who talks much either, so he is just trying to be strong for me,” the mother said.