Grandmother warns gunmen who killed Diego Martin man: Your time will come

Merle Baptiste, the grandmother of 23-year-old Kareem "Scooby" Baptiste, a Diego Martin man who was found dead in Belmont on December 13, had a warning for the people who killed her grandson.

“Your time will come,” she said, while speaking to reporters at the Forensic Science Centre in St James on December 16.

She told Newsday Baptiste had mental-health issues that made him aggressive and confrontational. She believed, in this state, he accosted the gunmen who took his life.

“He was in and out of St Ann’s about four times,” the grandmother said. “He was smoking from a young child and then they started giving him tablets, so it affected his brain.”

She said Baptiste’s mental issues made it difficult for him to work.

“He really wanted to, he really tried to get work, but he couldn’t make. Because of his mental issues people would come around him and he would get angry and aggressive, and they would fire him.”

The 23-year-old man’s lifeless body was found hog-tied on the side of the road on Textile Hill, Lady Young Road, Belmont, with a gunshot wound to the head.

Police said they responded to a report of a man lying on Textile Hill at about 6.50 am on December 13 and found him with his hands and feet tied together behind his back.

His body was taken to the Forensic Science Centre in St James, where an autopsy was expected to be done on Monday, but it was postponed.