Colford Ferguson wasn’t due to spend the day with his daughter Ny’Ashia on her fourth birthday.He turned up unannounced at her school on January 17 and then went to the home of her and her mother Nkosazana Wilson, before deciding to join them for a celebratory lunch at the Pickled Onion.Ms Wilson, 29, will be eternally grateful that he did. It was to be their last outing together as a family.“That’s one of my best memories,” she says. “He spent the day with us. To me it was a good thing that he actually got to spend her last birthday with her. We didn’t know what was going to happen.”Less than a month later, Mr Ferguson was dead: gunned down in broad daylight by a lone shooter who has yet to be caught.Ny’Ashia pulls out a bundle of photographs of that special day, along with countless others of her daddy, when The Royal Gazette asks to see her favourite pictures. The bubbly and mischievous little girl she takes after her father in that regard, according to Ms Wilson grins broadly as she holds up images of the two of them together.But lately, her mother says, she has been waking up crying at night.“I just hear ‘daddy, daddy, daddy’,” says Ms Wilson. “It’s really just her missing him. I just take her in my bed.“I go to work and people may think I have attitude, but I don’t. You don’t know if I have had a restless night. As soon as she starts crying, I break down because it hurts. She loved her daddy.”Ms Wilson and Mr Ferguson were no longer together at the time of his death on February 4 this year but they saw each other often and had no animosity.“The main thing was my daughter and her having a relationship with her daddy,” says Ms Wilson, of Warwick. “In Bermuda, I see a lot of baby momma, baby daddy drama. A lot of people fail to realise it’s the child who suffers.”Ms Wilson was determined that wouldn’t happen with Ny’Ashia but admits she was frustrated with Mr Ferguson, 29, for getting in trouble with the law and spending time in Westgate late last year.“He was a good father. I wanted him to be a better father; not even a better father, a better man. Finally, I kicked him in his tail and he said ‘I need to get myself together’.”After his release from jail in December, she noticed he’d “calmed down a lot” and was enthusiastic about finding work and a new apartment, as well as more serious about his responsibilities as a father.“To me, he came out a changed person. He was talking about going for a job. He got the job. That’s where he was working at the time [of the murder]. He was probably two weeks into his new job. What hurts me sometimes [is] that I never got to say ‘I’m really, really proud of you for making that step, for turning up at her school’.”Ms Wilson said her ex, whose mother died when he was a little boy and who hadn’t seen his father in more than two decades, had problems like anyone else.She added: “A lot of people try to paint a picture of him as a thief and whatever. But a lot of people didn’t know him like I knew him or his family or his closest friends.“Colford had a very, very big heart. All he wanted to do was get a job, get his own place and spend time with his family.“It’s hard because a lot of those guys are making steps to change themselves and when this happens it’s a void. You never get to see this person growing into that person you always felt they could be.”After the fatal shooting in Somerset, Ms Wilson had to identify Mr Ferguson’s body.A large tattoo on his back saying “Fergie”, his nickname, enabled her to do so. “They showed it to me. I just broke down and said ‘yes’. It’s just unreal.”She’s since had the same word inked onto her wrist in memory of him and says she and Ny’Ashia talk of him constantly.The little girl knows her daddy was shot though Ms Wilson didn’t tell her. She believes the child heard about it at a candlelit vigil for her late father.These days, the single mother is focused on giving her daughter the best upbringing she can, though her and Mr Ferguson’s plan to send Ny’Ashia to Warwick Academy straight after nursery school has had to be abandoned.“I have to rethink my whole plan for her as far as education goes.”Ms Wilson, whose brother was injured in a separate gun incident, said she was “tired of Bermuda, tired of hearing that somebody got shot” but hopeful Mr Ferguson’s killer would eventually be caught.“If I had information I would go to the police and tell them, especially if it would bring a conviction. I know his family and I know me, deep down in my heart, I want a conviction. He was taken in vain, really.”She added: “My daddy’s daughter is dead. I didn’t prepare myself for him not being in her life at 29 years old and his being killed. How do you prepare yourself for that?”