KINGSTON, Jamaica — Music producer Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor is using his platform to raise awareness about Jamaica’s growing desensitisation to violence following the circulation of a viral video that captured an eyewitness’ reaction to a deadly shootout in Mandeville.

On Wednesday, Di Genius posted a remix on Instagram, using audio from the viral clip in which the eyewitness animatedly described a four-hour-long standoff between police and a gunman on Tuesday as a “good shootout”. The intense exchange took place in an apartment on Caledonia Road and ended with the armed assailant being fatally shot.

Initially, McGregor thought the video was a lighthearted moment after being flooded with tags from fans urging him to remix it. However, upon learning the full context, including that the gunman had killed a civilian prior to the standoff, he felt uncomfortable with how people were simply laughing at the video.

“I was coming from the studio and I opened Instagram, and I saw a bunch of people tagging me on your (The Jamaica Observer) page, and mentioning me like, ‘yow remix this, remix this’, that kind of thing. So I never knew the context, I never knew what was happening, because I wasn’t on social media all day,” he said in an interview with Observer Online.

“So, I saw the clip with the man, I thought it was funny, but then, as I started reading the comments and seeing other things…Then I realised that some people died, and it was a whole thing. So, seeing the video and then seeing some of the comments, with so many people laughing, I was just like, you know, this kind of bad, because we’re kind of desensitised to this now, for real, that people can just see this and just laugh,” he continued.

Instead of joining in on the trend for laughs, the producer decided to approach the remix differently — using it as a tool to send a reminder to Jamaicans that violence is not normal.

“So, that’s why I kind of thought it out…and kind of flip the narrative in that way. To kind of be like yow, we can take this as a wake-up call versus just another viral joke kind of thing. Because I do think that was serious…it bothered me that a lot of people just thought it was funny, given the magnitude of the situation,” he said.

Reflecting on the broader issue, he pointed out that Jamaican society has grown numb to extreme acts of violence.

“We have a lot of these moments that always happen, and I think, especially where crime is concerned, we get so used to seeing so many extreme things. So I think everybody kind of used to things now, the fact that people are just out there, just a video, like [it’s] normal. Nobody never look scared, or [say] like, let them run for cover, or anything like that. It kind of shows the state that we’re in, our mentality as a country.

“So the message was just like, this isn’t normal, although we kind of get used to it, but we should try to realise that it’s definitely not a normal case, and we should just try, I guess, to be more mindful, and to stay away from those kinds of situations,” Di Genius explained.

Di Genius noted that the remix has since been well-received on social media.

“I mean, I just posted it not too long ago, and I think most of the people commenting and sharing it, that’s what they were saying, so I guess the message was received in the way I was imagining it,” he said.

Highly placed police sources said Tuesday’s sequence of events started shortly after 7:00 am when Dave Alfrancis Wilson, otherwise called “Brown Man”, 54, an unemployed deportee, got into an altercation, reportedly over the price of eggs, with another man. Police theorise that the suspect shot the man in his upper body.

The injured man, who police identified as Adrian Bernard, reportedly drove a Toyota Corolla after he was shot up on Caledonia Road before crashing into the back of a Toyota Prado. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Police then went to Wilson’s Caledonia Road apartment. There, the authorities said Wilson fired at the security forces from the ground-floor at the front of the complex. Two armoured vehicles and a truck were used to breach the premises and remove a grille during the security forces’ entry.

Police said a multi-calibre Omni hybrid rifle, one Beretta pistol with an extended magazine and over 450 assorted rounds were taken from the premises.

READ: STAND-OFF: Deportee trades gunfire with security forces in prolonged battle after Mandeville murder

Speaking with Observer Online shortly after the incident, one eyewitness shared, “I was watching what was taking place and the only thing I hear is pam, pam, pam, pam. The dawg just waving the rifle like he was in the military, you know? It was a good shootout because he make police come from Clarendon, Kingston, he make big history in the system but one thing I never want to happen they shouldn’t kill him. We did want him because he was a bad shooter. Only thing I hear pam pam pam.”

— Vanassa McKenzie