By: Tony Best

What started out as a fun weekend after the highly festive Fourth of July national holiday ended in a bloodbath in a predominately Caribbean community in Queens and as a result a West Indian family is now preparing to bury a relative.

        Jason Wood, father of a four year old son who lives in Jamaica, was shot execution style along with two friends 33 year old Jaime Bussereth, and an unidentified victim, all of whom were killed when an unknown gunman opened fire on them with an AK-47 while they were sitting in a Jeep Cherokee along 144^th Street in Springfield Garden, an area of middle-income homeowners.

        “He’s a good kid to me,” Lenworth Wood, father of a 27 year old victim told a reporter.

        As the police and some people familiar with the circumstances surrounding the murderous rampage explained it, the killings occurred after a man became angry when one of the dead men glanced at a woman attending a social function at Albany Manor, a well-known hangout in Brooklyn where Caribbean events are held mostly on week-ends.

        “It was over a girl, over a look,” said a friend of a victim. “They were followed from the club and shot.”

        Katie Bussereth, sister of Jaime Busserth, who was driving the vehicle when 63 shots were fired at the victims sitting in the Jeep agreed.

        “Someone followed them from the club,” she said. “They didn’t want any money. They wanted death.”

        Shirley Farrell, who lives in the Queens community, said that the glass door of her home was hit by a stray bullet but it didn’t cause any injuries to anyone inside the building.

        “There were so many booms all at once,” she said. “I have three children, and my children are traumatized. They don’t want to come outside.”

        Bussereth was the father of three children, 11 year old and two year old twins and like Wood he was described as a “good father” who looked after his youngsters.

        “Jaime was a good father. He loved his kids more than anything,” said his sister. “He was always there for his kids. Everyone is so distraught.”

        The unknown shooter who fled the scene immediately after the deadly gunfire erupted left three men dead at the scene while a fourth victim survived what a police officer described as a brazen act that brought back memories of the violence of the 1980s and 1990s that engulfed large sections of Queens during the height of the crack epidemic.

        “I have not seen a scene like this since the 1990s,” the officer said. “The rounds tore the bodies apart.”

        The killings occurred during a violent night when at least seven people, including a child who was allegedly bludgeoned to death by his mother were killed in different parts of the City.

        The child, Bernard Revell lived with his mother, Tenika Revell in an apartment on Marcus Garvey Boulevard in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The mother was described by residents as a loving woman who looked after he son and they were at a loss to explain what happened.