Dad of murdered artiste: What did my son do to you?

Curtis Bovell, the father of murdered Trinibad artiste N'Kosi Bovell, wants to know what his son did to deserve such a gruesome end.

On Sunday evening, 27-year-old Bovell, stage name Fari Dan, was liming with a group of friends shortly before 11pm, at Dutch Fort Restaurant and Bar in Scarborough, when two gunmen approached. Bovell, whose back was turned to the killers, was shot multiple times. The gunmen ran away in the direction they had come from. Footage of the murder was captured by CCTV.

Speaking with Newsday on Tuesday, Curtis called on the perpetrators to surrender to police.

“Come and give up yourselves. Let the authorities know – tell them straight, because if you lie to me today, you will face it tomorrow when God comes. So, you have to tell the authorities who sent you, what Bovell has done to you for you to commit this crucial act.”

Bovell said he was in bed when the shocking news came.

“A neighbour came calling me and he showed me a little photo on the phone, but I couldn’t recognise it properly because remember I was sleeping. I looked at the photo again and I realised that yes it was my son from the back view, then his wife bawl out and said look somebody just sent another photo and she ran across and brought it for me to see. So then when she brought it across, I realised it was my son.”

He said he remains troubled.

“I was shocked, all now it is very painful.”

He said the entire family remains traumatised.

“Everybody is in a mess right now, everybody is in a mess because everybody knows N’kosi, Fari Dan, Chubby – he was a spoil child in the family. He was loved by everyone.”

He said he does not want vengeance. "I leave everything in the hands of the Lord because reprisal, I don’t want that, and I don’t like that. I am not the parent that would swear that I had the best child. I am not saying that my child was involved in any illicit – you would hear all kinds of things but only God is the judge, I can’t judge.”

He said there was a lot of rivalry in his son's music. Fari Dan's songs discuss gang violence and murder with over 100,000 hits on YouTube. Among his catalogue include Gun Play, 6 Neva Die, 6 Resurrection, Must Get It and Gingy Fly.

“All I know is that my son sings dancehall. If a singer sings something that he doesn’t like, he would sing against it...My son sings against a lot of people who sings dancehall because if you are breathing hatred and malice, my son would sing against it. Even in his videos, he said he know that they would be targeting him, so he knew.”

He said he had several conversations with his son about this type of music.

“I spoke to him a lot of times. I told him if he could change the rhythm, utilise some gospels in the songs and all these kinds of things.”

He said the most difficult thing was to see his son's body being removed from the crime scene.

“It was a horrified, terrible situation. I know to myself that I couldn’t stand that; thanks to the people who were around me at that time."

He said it is only when a situation like this hits home that you "feel the weight" of what has transpired.

"My heart is burning, I am just trying to stay strong.”

He said while his son was focused solely on making a name for himself in the music business, he would sell coconuts and breadfruits on the side to make a dollar.

He said Bovell used to travel to Trinidad to push his music.

"Up to recently, he was in Moruga where he met with his grandmother relatives. All of them was liming, then he left Moruga and came back to Tobago about a week, a week and a half ago.”

The father said he last saw his son last Friday by the same bar where the incident took place.

“He asked me to buy a soup for him and I gave him $100. Since then, I haven’t seen him.”