An elderly peacemaker collapsed and died metres away from his home after attempting to part a fight on Wednesday night.
An eyewitness said almost a dozen people, including young children, teenagers and parents were in the brawl, which started on the compound of the O’Level Institute and continued on the road near the National Housing Corporation’s Country Park Towers.
Robert Quinton, 70, died at 1st Avenue, Alleyne’s Lane, Passage Gardens, St Michael, and another eyewitness said he was kicked moments before he fell. The animal lover had been trying to rescue a teenager.
Antonia Alleyne told the Weekend Nation if you were cold, her father probably would have offered you the clothes off his back.
The father of 11 once worked at the School Meals Department before becoming a security officer.
Yesterday, from the verandah of his home, a very hoarse Alleyne was still trying to come to grips with her dad’s sudden passing.
She wasn’t surprised he tried to help someone out, especially since the girl involved in the fray was his friend’s daughter. She often stopped at the house after classes.
Still, Alleyne was surprised he intervened in the brawl.
“If you are stranger and you wanted something to eat, he would give you, but going in the midst of a fight . . . that’s not something he would normally do,” she said.
“We were standing here and he was talking to me about going to buy [dog food] . . . but then he went over there to see what was happening when he realised she hadn’t come over yet.”
Alleyne did not leave immediately and checked to see if her children were safe.
“So when I got there, I saw what he was doing and then I started to quarrel with him and say, ‘You too old for this; why you in the mix of this?’,” she recalled.
“Every time he took the girl out of the fight, she kept turning around and going back,” his daughter said.
She added after her father walked away from the crowd, she spotted the teenager and told her to go home.
“After I turn my back to my father, the woman from next door tell me ‘you father fall down’. So I can’t say he get kick ’bout, because I didn’t see any of that.”
Police investigations into this matter are continuing. (TG)
