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‘I always figured he’d be there’

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Photo by Tamell SimonsStil numb: Eugene Hendrickson, father of the late Freddy Maybury.

Eugene Hendrickson didn’t get to spend too much time with his son, Freddy Maybury, before the 34-year-old was murdered in June last year.“I feel that there was a lot of time that was lost because I always figured he’d be there, he’d be around,” the 73-year-old security guard told The Royal Gazette.“I have got to get to grips with spending time with [Mr Maybury’s son] Isaiah. I see him but I sort of shy away from him because I don’t know how to handle it. I’m working on that.”Father-of-six Mr Hendrickson got to think long and hard about some of his regrets and his grief over his slain son as he lay in a bed at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital following surgery in April.“I was in the very same room that I had to go and identify him,” he said. “I was saying ‘I wonder if this is the same bed that he was lying in’. I spent about three or four hours and just lay there and thought about things.“I worked in the hospital years ago and I seen a lot of grieving parents coming there. I could never really imagine how they felt until it happened to me. I still feel numb.”Mr Hendrickson was not married to Mr Maybury’s mother, the late Sylvia Santucci, and he cites certain private family dynamics for the somewhat remote relationship he had with his son.But he said his other children were close to their brother and he would always enjoy seeing Freddy.“When he was small we used to have some time,” explained Mr Hendrickson. “As he got into school I never saw very much of him. His mother would tell me things about him. Every time I saw him, he’d be smiling. I can still see him smiling.”Mr Maybury’s dazzling grin he was known to friends as “Stunna” was perhaps his most distinctive feature, according to those who loved him. That and his devotion to sons Isaiah Robinson and Keizae Tankard.But the self-employed plumber’s life was brought to a swift and untimely end when two gunmen took aim at him outside Woody’s bar in Sandys in the early hours of June 14, 2010.Mr Hendrickson got a call from one of his son’s uncles about the fatal shooting. “I couldn’t really make out what he was saying but I heard ‘the hospital’,” he said.“When I went to the hospital I saw some of his friends outside the hospital and the hospital was closed down. His uncle came over to me.“We went in the operating theatre and just from going in there he was dead. The cover was on him. The policeman said ‘don’t touch nothing’. I said ‘OK’. I saw him.”Since that night, he said, he has tried to allow the grieving process to “take its course”.“My wife, she lost her son, and every now and then she’ll cry about him. I’m experiencing the same thing.”The couple live in Middletown and have heard gunshots just yards from their back door in recent years, due to the ongoing gang warfare that has since 16 men murdered since May, 2009.“You look around and you see all these kids, they don’t have a father,” he said, adding that 13-year-old Isaiah also lost his mother to cancer shortly before Mr Maybury was shot.“He lost his grandmother too; he was close with Freddy’s momma. Three people that played a very important part in his life as a youngster coming up.”Mr Hendrickson had no knowledge of his son having any gang involvement. “He was working hard. I don’t think he would have much time for that.“I think he was going after getting himself a house. He was aggressive as far as his work. He liked nice things. He had a jet ski. He’d fix up a car and sell it and buy another car. He used to keep his cars looking nice.”Though the chance to forge a close bond with Freddy has gone, Mr Hendrickson insists he feels no anger towards those who killed him and doesn’t want revenge.“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said. “I feel sad for the fellow who done it. There’s nothing that we can do that’s going to bring him back. That’s a life that’s gone.“Freddy was a father and I feel sorry for the guy that pulled the trigger. I can’t see anybody in their right mind doing something like that. You have got to be warped.“When you do this thing, you are not human. I can understand an animal killing another animal for food but what is it that another human can do that makes you murder him? And you shoot another person in the back? You are a coward.”He said not knowing who was responsible was difficult to handle. “The funny thing about it: I could be standing up and talking to the person. It’s a faceless person. You don’t know who they are, like a ghost.“If the person got caught and done it, I would like to ask them ‘what did Freddy do to you that you would want to take his life? Was it worth it?’. But it won’t make me feel no better because he’s gone.”Mr Maybury had six siblings: David Maybury, Earlston Butterfield, Debra Perinchief and Tammy, Kim and Cecil Hendrickson.Cecil Hendrickson told this newspaper the Hendrickson siblings forgave their brother’s killers but wanted answers as to why they shot him."It is difficult to know why this not only happened to our brother but how a human being could do this to another human being," he said. "I want them to know that, more than a life, they stole possibilities from us all: the possibility to be closer as a family, to know our nephews better. They took birthdays, barbeques and family outings from us and have left us questioning why."He added: "What was worth the loss of all this for us? Pride? Street cred? Embarrassment? I believe that the essence of what would give us a measure of peace is [to know] why."He said a week before the "untimely and brutal" murder, he and Mr Maybury discussed spending more time together so their families could know each other better."Now we will never have it the way it should be. And his loss is not just a loss for family but the loss of a good man and a great father: Something the world is in short supply of."

A tribute posted online to murder victim Freddy Maybury, seen here with youngest son Keizae Tankard.
Photo by Tamell SimonsStill numb: Eugene Hendrickson, father of the late Freddy Maybury.