Manchester landscaper who survived eight strokes shot dead at Trinity home

For years, news that Andrew Williams was unwell left his relatives in dread. At 57, he had come through eight strokes and lived with diabetes, severe hypertension and a heart condition, outlasting crisis after crisis. Every scare meant more prayer, sleepless nights and rushed trips to hospital. Family members long believed that if death came for him, it would be from the ailments he had fought so hard. Instead, violence took the man they had worked so hard to keep alive.

Last Thursday, the quiet landscaper and community cook, known affectionately as One Son, was discovered shot multiple times inside his house in Trinity, near Porus in Manchester. Relatives are still struggling to accept that a man they expected illness might claim was murdered instead.

"Nobody, nothing can justify that," his eldest son, Castio, said. "He does not deserve that. He is a humble man."

Castio, who lives abroad, told THE STAR that the morning remains etched in his mind. His mother, still close to Williams after they parted, rang him soon after neighbours raised the alarm. At first there was no hint of a killing. Castio said he had just got home from work when she called in distress, saying someone had reported Williams lying on the ground, unconscious. He assumed another stroke or heart attack.

"I told her to go in there and check for pulse because it could be his heart or strokes," he said, recalling that a medical emergency was his first thought. Then the picture changed. His mother reported seeing blood, and neighbours urged her not to go inside because they had heard gunfire. Castio pressed her to enter anyway and admitted he "started to cuss" before the line cut off.

Desperate for word, he rang a cousin based in May Pen and pleaded with him to drive to the house. The wait, he said, seemed to stretch forever. Roughly 20 minutes later the cousin arrived and crushed what hope was left.

"He went in there and told me it looks like he got gunshot. I told him this can't be real and they must be crazy," Castio said, breaking down in tears as he asked why his father had to die that way. Williams' body, marked by bullet wounds, was found in the bedroom.

Castio called him "the jack of all trades" who simply "kept working." He remembered tagging along as a boy from the cookshop to weekend landscaping jobs.

"He did painting, plumbing, electrical, he is just that type of man. ... Cook a funeral, party, any cooking event, he is there in the community. He is just that type of man," the son said.

The brutality of the death still overwhelms Castio. Even in grief, he is set on seeing the killers face justice.

"He does not deserve this. My dad is an innocent man, and I will take that to my grave. I will do everything within the law to bring justice and closure," he said. "That man is my hero — and the hero of many people.," he added.