GRANVILLE, St James — A family has been left grief-stricken following the murders of two brothers within a month.

Ian Elliot, a 28-year-old resident of Granville, St James was killed during a drive-by shooting in the community on Saturday.

According to Elliott’s mother, Marie Smith, her son and two other men were walking home from a football field in the community at approximately noon, when they were pounced up on by two men in an undisclosed motor vehicle.

Smith explained that after realising what was taking place, the men tried to run but Elliott slipped and fell.

“Yesterday [Saturday] he left to go play ball and when him a come back, by the time him reach the church, dem seh one car come round and two men come out and start shoot him. Him and my nephew were walking and a next friend. My nephew and the friend ran off and dem say Ian slide and that is how they got to shoot him,” she said between sobs.

Elliott, a father of two young children, died on the scene after receiving gunshots to his neck and stomach.

Smith told Observer Online that she has been in a state of shock since she first heard the news of her older son’s murder, as her younger son Ryan Elliott was also killed in the community less than a month ago. He was only 23.

Ian, she said, was the son every mother would love, and his death has left her and his family with many questions.

“Ian is such a wonderful person. Ian did not deserve this. They killed my son about one month now, Ian’s little brother so I do not know why they would want to do Ian [like this]. And Ian and nobody nuh have anything. I do not know why. I do not know why; I just have to ask myself why,” said Smith.

“[This] is very hard, especially Ian’s [murder] because Ian did not keep company. When Ryan would keep company, Ian did not. If you do not see Ian and his cousin, it is Ian and girls. A just girl a Ian problem. I did not have a problem with Ian, he was such a wonderful person and son,” she added.

The mother supports the call for a Zone of Special Operations in the community, which was made by councillor for the Granville division, Michael Troupe, on Saturday, after Elliott was killed.

“I am in support of a ZOSO in Granville because I lost my two sons in the space of one month,” said Smith.

Wife and mother of Ian’s two children, Denise Smith-Elliott, shared that she has been feeling numb since her husband’s death.

The couple shared some 10 years together and are parents to young children aged four and six.

 “Mi feel like mi dead. My kids are very young. I am older than Ian and we have been married for two years. I met Ian when he was 19 and I was 30 and I got married to him. I know that I was older than him, so it is like we grow [together] because he was with me for so long,” said Smith-Elliott.

She described her husband as “very quiet and ambitious.” Noting that he had “very big dreams.”

“He loved his children very much. The children are very traumatised,” Smith-Elliott told Observer Online.

A friend of the deceased, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told our news team that Elliott did not deserve to be killed.

“Ian a nuh no bad man. Dem youth deh a footballer. Dem youth deh never deserve certain things and wah mi see deh gwan in the community right now, a round two to three years no shot nah fire on Gordon Crescent so mi nuh know wah deh gwan,” he said.

Rochelle Clayton