NEW YORK, United States – Police in Brooklyn are continuing their investigation to ascertain the motive for Sunday’s shooting death of Jamaican-born Donovan Davy.

The 45-year-old was having a phone conversation with his sister while walking to his mother’s house in the East Flatbush area of Brooklyn.

Davy, a federal security officer with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was assigned duties at the John F Kennedy International Airport in Queens. He worked with the TSA for 17 years.

Police theorise that Davy was surprised by his killer. “I heard three shots and I was calling his name but he wasn’t responding at all. I just couldn’t believe it, I heard my brother die over the phone,” the New York Daily News quoted his sister, who requested anonymity.

Davy, who had no criminal record, according to the police, was described by John Bambury, the TSA federal director at JFK International, as a “long-time valued employee taken from us too soon in another senseless act of gun violence off duty”, the Daily News reported.

Bambury said Davy will be missed by his co-workers and the entire TSA family.

Family members told police that Davy, who attended Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, and who was fluent in French and Spanish, was not one to make enemies. They questioned why someone would want to hurt him.

Davy’s murder marks the second killing of a Jamaican in New York City in the past month. Gladstone Barrett, a 72-year-old minibus operator, was shot by his daughter’s ex-boyfriend during an argument between the two on April 1. Barrett died in hospital several days later.