A former policeman fell victim to gun violence on Friday night. At 10 p.m. Clarence Raymond Leslie, 28, left his home on Mahogany Street to buy steak for him and his pregnant common law wife Nicole Myers at Li Chee on Freetown Road, but they never got to enjoy the steak because on the way to buy it, he was shot. A short distance from his home, Leslie was knocked off his bicycle by two men on bikes who pounced on him. One of his attackers was armed and he pulled out a gun, reportedly a nine milimeter, and shot Clarence Leslie numerous times. One of those bullets caught him in the head and he died on the spot.
At home his girlfriend Nicole Myers didn’t know what was happening. She waited anxiously for his return. She recalled that before the shooting, Clarence left home with $27 to buy the steak. Wearing sunshades to mask her tears, the grief stricken Myers who is six and a half months pregnant with Leslie’s child said, “I gave him $27 for him to buy. He asked what will I eat and I said I would want a steak and so he said he will go to Li Chee and I will buy the steak for me and you to eat the night.” She waited until 11 p.m. and still he didn’t return. That is when she began to worry. “I told my cousin like this, I said, ‘he went too long and I know him, if he knows I am hungry he won’t take so long with my food’.”
That was around the same time when his sister Samantha McFadzean got the call that her brother had been shot. The family frantically rushed to the scene. Seconds felt like minutes and minutes felt like hours as they approached the murder scene where they saw a crowd around a pool of blood. The family was perhaps still in disbelief, finding it hard to grasp that their brother and son who troubled no one and had no known enemies fell victim to the streets. It is hard for his family, especially his mother, a former Fire Arms Clerk at the Police Department and so too for his sister Shellymae Young. Just days before, she had hired her brother to cut grass on a piece of land she had bought.
But no one is in more grief that Nicole Myers who is six and a half months pregnant with Clarence’s child. Police promises a vigorous investigation, but they are unclear as to a motive. Two suspects were detained but released. Clarence Leslie joined the Police Department in 2000 but was retired in 2006 due to medical reasons.
