Cancer survivor Iva Hart had to draw on her every strength to continue to fight for her life in the aftermath of her son Earl Hart’s assassination, and though it’s been almost nine years since his death, she and his children think about him every day.
“To the people that are responsible for my son’s murder, I am just asking you all, if it’s not justice for me, it could be justice for his three children. I know whatever my son was involved in, it could not have been that bad that you had to take my son’s life with seven shots,” Hart said in a recent interview for the Cayman Compass Cold Case Files series, produced in partnership with the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service.
This month’s Cold Case Files shines the light on Earl Hart’s 4 Oct. 2013 murder.
The 23-year-old was at his Marina Drive home in Prospect when he was ambushed and gunned down.
Last month, a coroner’s court ruled the shooting death of the father-of-three an unlawful killing.
Detective Sergeant Peter Dean, who heads up the Serious Crime Review Team looking into Hart’s murder, said the killing was particularly disturbing as he was executed in his home, with his young daughter and his pregnant girlfriend nearby.
Multiple shots fired
Dean said the evening of 4 Oct. started off as any other for the young Hart family in their Marina Drive home.
However, things drastically changed at 9:30pm when two men launched a violent attack on Earl Hart.
He was in his kitchen when they shot at him through an open window, hitting him seven times.
“We do believe this was a targeted attack,” Dean said. “It is not a one-off, it’s not as though it’s any form of mistaken identity. I highly suspect that the targeted attack was as a result of Earl Hart’s criminal lifestyle. He was a petty criminal. He wasn’t a person who was involved in incredibly violent crime or anything like that, but he was a minor criminal.
“I believe it’s as a result of his criminal activity in the period before he was killed, that actually caused him to be targeted.”
He said police believe that the killers suspected Hart of theft and that may have led to his eventual death.
Dean said he knows there are people who have information that can help with the investigation, and he urged them to come forward.
He added that he has knowledge of the suspects and believes that at least one of them is struggling with the burden of his crime.
“I believe that since the shooting of Earl Hart, this particular person has suffered mental health stress and problems as a direct result of the actions he took on the 3rd of October, 2013. I do truly believe this that person will never get true freedom until he actually comes forward and admits the actions that he carried out that night,” Dean said.
He said though people had came forward with information, evidence is still needed and he has extended a pathway for the gunmen to come forward.
“This isn’t going to go away, and for that person to get any short of redemption, he needs to come forward and tell the truth – because that’s all we’re bothered about – and take the consequences of what his actions were that day… Clearly in his mind, and I believe in the eyes of God, he is not going to get any forgiveness until he [admits] to what he’s done,” Dean added, as he issued a direct appeal to that shooter.
A mother’s heartache
For Iva Hart, the wounds left by the murder of her son remain fresh, and the pain due to his killers not being caught continues to gnaw at her.
“This is not the United States, this is not Jamaica or anywhere crime is raging. We are such a small island and these things are happening and we can’t get justice. We can’t charge anyone for these crimes. It’s ridiculous,” she said.
She said it hurts her to watch her grandchildren, two of whom live with her, grow up without their father.
“Not one day that passed that they do not ask [about their dad],” she said. “Javian, you’ll see him standing at his room window looking out and I would say, ‘Javian, you OK?’… ‘Yes, Granny’… and then you see him bust out in one cry and I would ask him, ‘What’s the matter?’. He wants his daddy or he misses his daddy. I would say, ‘Granny missing him just as much as you guys.'”
Hart said every day it bothers her knowing her son’s three children, one of whom was born four months after Hart was killed, are still waiting to see their father’s killers caught.
“I just plead with whoever has information to come forward with it, so my three grandchildren will be able to get justice. They ain’t going to bring him back, but at least his children, my grandchildren, will be able to get some sort of justice,” she said.
She said she is reminded of her son when she looks at his children.
“I just try to be as strong as I can for his children, especially the two that I am raising,” she said. “The little boy Javian looks like him. Sometimes just looking at him, I break down in tears. I don’t make them see me cry because Daltia [his daughter] especially, she reminds me so much of her father.”
The events on the night of 4 Oct. 2013 still feel as if it were yesterday for her.
She said she spoke to Hart earlier that day, as she was preparing to leave for her cancer treatment overseas the next day. In the evening, she had checked on her flight and she tried to reach her son on his cellphone without success.
At the time, she said she thought nothing of it and, after packing her suitcase, she got dressed to head to her cancer survivors meeting when she heard the special ringtone she had assigned to her son’s number.
She answered her phone and recalled, “I didn’t even say hello… I said ‘Boy, from the time I calling you, you just answering it?’… it was Nikita [Earl’s girlfriend] and she was like ‘Oh Miss Iva, Earl just got shot.”
She said she rushed to his home, drove through the police tape and her friend Charmane Dalhouse-Morgan, a police detective at the time, stopped her at the scene and told her Earl was not there, as he had already been taken away in an ambulance.
She saw her granddaughter, who was one month shy of her third birthday, in tears.
“She said, ‘Daddy got shot and I [told] Mommy that he is dead, and she said no.’ I took the child since they said they had already left for the hospital,” she recalled.
Anyone with information relating to Earl Hart’s murder or any of the cases in this series can call the Serious Crime Review Team confidential tip line at 649-2930
The mother paused as she recounted arriving at the hospital on time to see the ambulance doors open and her son lifted out.
“I was by the emergency door when the ambulance pulled up and they wheeled my child over there. They was pumping, pumping him, and I wanted to go in, but they tell me that I had to wait.”
Later that night, when walking into the operating theatre waiting area, she saw one of the surgeons shake his head. That’s when she knew her son was dead, she said.
“My legs just give out under me,” she said, adding that reality did not really hit her until she had to identify her son’s body.
She said she had always practised tough love to straighten out her son, especially as she worked with the RCIPS at the time.
“I remember me coming home from doing chemo… going into his room and I see something there that I knew I didn’t purchase and he wasn’t working. I called the police,” she recalled.
He was holding stolen items and he ended up in prison because of that, she said, adding that “I never went to prison to see him… this is where [bad] company leads you.”
She said she knew her son was going down the wrong path, but his life was valuable and he had a family he was living for.
Even if his killers are found, she said, it’s not going to provide closure for her.
“Earl was my child and he will always be my baby.”
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