Shinardo banks on education as ticket out of ghetto

Four years after marauding gangsters opened gunfire on a group of mostly teens in the Matthews Lane area of West Kingston, Shinardo Wilson, the most critically injured from the lot, is on his way to a bachelor’s degree in electrical technology on a scholarship at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech).

Wilson was among a group of friends and observers engaged in a game of dominoes on August 12, 2018, when gunmen seeking to snuff out two of their adversaries launched a drive-by attack.

The then 15-year-old Calabar High School student, who had his back turned to the action, was directly in the firing line.

Four people were injured in the mass shooting, but Wilson suffered the most.

He was shot in the back and rib.

But even then, he remained unaware of what was transpiring until a friend, he recalled, dragged him while in a dash to leave.

It was during that sprint and unfolding chaos that he began feeling severe pain in his left upper body and realised that he had been shot.

Wilson and his friend found refuge in a yard and waited out the attack.

“While running, we could hear the shots going and going. A lot of things were going through my mind. I was wondering if I would die at the age of 15. Would I make it to see my mother again? It was all negative thinking,” the 19-year-old recalled in a Gleaner interview on Tuesday.

He said that after informing his friend that he had been shot, the friend removed his shirt and applied pressure to the wounds.

A few minutes later, the two assessed and confirmed that the threat was no more.

The friend then assisted Wilson to the main road, where residents ushered him into a vehicle to take him to the Kingston Public Hospital, fewer than five minutes away from the crime scene.

“They couldn’t even numb the area or anything. They just went straight into operation, using a little knife to cut above the wounds and putting in tubes. I guess they were to release the bad blood,” he recalled of doctors who worked feverishly to save his life.

An X-ray later showed that his spleen had been damaged. The organ was removed a day later.

“It was terrifying. Frightening,” Wilson reflected. “I was on the verge of becoming another statistic. My death would mean nothing, given the environment I lived in. You know how ghetto stay. It’s war after war.”

Still, he said he purposed that his reality then would not determine his future.

“I told myself that education will be my way out of the ghetto. Despite what happened to me, I’m not giving up,” he said, noting that he still resides in an area commonly referred to as Spanglers.

In the year that followed the gun attack, Wilson sat eight subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate level. He passed six and enrolled in Calabar High’s sixth-form programme.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, which ensued a year later, and the financial challenges that it brought for many families, forced him to abandon year two of the programme.

Determined to succeed, Wilson seized an opportunity to participate in the Jamaica Energy Partners (JEP) Group/USAID Skills Training Programme.

He and 19 other young men between the ages of 18 and 24 years from communities across west, east, and central Kingston communities were selected by JEP Group for an internship at the company’s power plant.

The programme aims to prevent criminal involvement and reduce unemployment, poverty, and other contributory factors to maladaptive behaviours among youths.

“It was through this opportunity I discovered my love for electrical engineering when my appetite was whet,” he told The Gleaner.

“For anyone going through a rough life, the first thing you must tell yourself is that you will not be limited by your environment and bad experiences. Do not give up. Push and go for what you want. At the end of the day, hard work must pay off, and if you work smart, there will be a way,” he advised.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com