The night of 17 Sept. 2011 still feels like yesterday for Erica Webster; that was when life for her and her family changed forever.
It is the date when her 18-year-old brother Preston Ezikiel Rivers was gunned down in West Bay.
“My brother didn’t get to live his life… I can’t, I can’t,” Erica sobbed as she broke down in tears on 3 Nov. when she spoke with the Cayman Compass.
Rivers lost his life to gang violence.
He was ambushed and shot multiple times after he exited a car at an apartment complex on Andresen Road, off Conch Point Road on that September night.
The painful memory of losing her baby brother, she said, remains with her to this day.
“Not a day… not a day we have [forgotten him],” she said.
Rivers, of West Bay, was one of four young men murdered during what police called tit-for-tat gang-related killings.
His murder is the second killing being profiled in this special four-part series in the Cold Case Files, in partnership with the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service.
The first focussed on the murder of Jason Christian, who was the fourth man to be killed over one fateful week in September 2011. Rivers was the third.
‘Another sad case’
Serious Crime Review team leader Detective Sargeant Peter Dean said Rivers’ murder was “another sad case of a young man losing his life for absolutely no reason whatsoever. He was 18 years old.”
It’s a view shared by Erica and Rivers’ first cousin, Evanell Rivers, who comforted the sobbing sister in the interview.
Evanell said she looked up to the teenager as a big brother and shared a loving relationship.
“Preston was a very jovial, happy individual. I can’t remember a time where I didn’t have a happy moment with Preston, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that he was a very loving and caring person as well… very fun to be around,” she said.
Erica said while her brother was a very outgoing person, he was also quiet and shy – though that was not the case around family.
He just turned 18 years old and to know that he was taken from us in such a cruel and heartbreaking way, it’s hard [for] us to wake up every day, living our lives when he didn’t get a chance to,” – Evanell Rivers
She shared a family video with the teenager dancing; it is moments like that the family holds on to instead of the tragic circumstances of his death.
“He just turned 18 years old and to know that he was taken from us in such a cruel and heartbreaking way, it’s hard [for] us to wake up every day, living our lives when he didn’t get a chance to,” Evanell said.
Recounting the day of his murder, she said she was celebrating her 16th birthday when she got the news.
“You don’t expect to hear something like that… it breaks my heart because I didn’t expect it to be Preston. I had seen the ambulances and police cars going into West Bay. He was the last person on my mind to think that something happened to him,” she said.
Evanell said when she got the news confirming it was her cousin, “it was just hard to grasp. I just spoke to him earlier that day.”
Keeping his memory alive
A decade later, she said her family here and in Tampa still talk about Rivers.
“It’s so surreal. I’ve had my kids after Preston passed and he’s spoken about so much in the home, that my kids know of him. They referred to him as ‘Uncle Zeky’ and that’s just because I try to keep his memory alive also through them (even though they didn’t get a chance to meet him) and that he’s thought about,” she said.
Evanell, in honour of her cousin, had his portrait tattooed on her left arm.
Pointing to it, she asked, “He was handsome wasn’t he?”
Erica sobbed as she looked down at the tattoo.
They both agree it has been hard for the family to accept that Rivers’ murder remains unsolved.
“It hurts. So if we can get some answers after all these years, I mean, no one would want it to be their brother or their son or cousin… that they would have to go through something like this. They wouldn’t want their family member’s murder to be unsolved after all these years, that’s hard to accept,” Evanell said.
Erica pleaded for the public to come forward and help them get justice.
Anyone with information can call the Serious Crime Review Team confidential tip line at 649-2930.
“Any information, no matter how small it is, it would help,” she said.
Evanell added, “it could be the simplest, smallest little thing. We need it… our father needs that closure to be able to grieve the way that we’re supposed to. There’s no way that Cayman is this small and no one knows anything after all of these years.”
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