Cancer survivor shot dead

Two men, one of whom beat terminal cancer, were murdered in unrelated incident on Sunday within a 12-hour space.

Nigel Rudder, known to his family and friends as a man who liked to drink and lime, was found dead near his Petit Valley home while Anthony Douglas, a cancer survivor, could not survive bullets which struck him while visiting his two children.

In the first incident, Rudder was shot dead in an incident which his relatives described as “pure wickedness.” Police sources said that at about 6 am, gunshots were heard in Eagle Drive and when residents checked, they found the 31-year-old on the ground. He was shot in the head.

“This was a wicked, senseless killing,” said a relative at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday. An autopsy showed he was shot once in the head. “We come from a family of drinkers,” said another relative.

“He was just a man who liked to drink. He was an easy target as he was a drinker. He never hurt a fly and was not in any gang thing,” the relative said. Rudder was a joiner by trade. No arrest was made and investigations are continuing.

Some 12 hours later, another 31-year-old man was shot dead. Anthony Douglas, a cancer survivor from Maracas St Joseph was killed in the living room of the house where the mother of his children live at Tonca Bean Trace in St Augustine.

Douglas, father of a one-month-old baby and another baby who turns two in a matter of days, was handing over the youngest of the children to its mother, to breast feed when a gunman stormed the house and without warning shot Douglas dead. Relatives said that earlier in the day, Douglas said he was getting “bad vibes” and was in two minds about visiting his children and their mother. He decided to go anyway.

Douglas beat kidney cancer which he suffered with as a teenager.

Relatives described him as a loving, family oriented man, who would do anything for his family and friends. No arrest has been made.