Football coach: ‘I did not sign up to be shot in a public place’

After hearing “bullets whistle” by his head during Sunday night’s shooting at the Ed Bush Stadium, Virgil Seymour, Academy SC’s technical director, has decided to step away from the sport.

“I did not volunteer to be shot,” Seymour told the Compass on Monday, 26 Feb.

His decision came less than a day after what he described as a “mass shooting”, which left seven people injured during a game that involved his team Academy, which he has spent the last 16 years developing.

Seymour said the situation has left him traumatised, noting that there is nothing to compare the event to because there has never been a shooting like this in a public space in Cayman.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said. “Those bullets missed me and one of the parents that was standing next to me and we could hear the bullets whistling by. My son was on the field. Academy was the only team outside when the shooting took place and it’s a good thing that Elite was inside the changing room because how the bullets came through, some of their players would’ve gotten shot, no doubt.

“If you listen to the video you can hear around 16 to 18 [shots]. Imagine… [many of those bullets] went astray, and it could’ve been really worse and I am not sticking around to wait for that. I did not sign up to be shot in a public place. That was a wake-up call last night, not only for me, but the whole island.”

Seymour recalled after the shots stopped, he went to check on his wife who was in the stands at the time but came upon someone who had been shot.

“I started to deal with him right away,” the coach recalled.

He added that he still loves football, but asked, “How do I invest in football when the society in which we play is not safe? How can you ask your coach to keep young adults safe, to come and play a game in a society that the government has not secured?

“What’s the point of having a football club, if you go and play a game and you get shot at… and that is why I’m stepping away. Deal with the crimes so we can play games safely.”

Seymour added that he has invested a lot in football – a sport that helped him deal with stress, but now instead is causing him stress.

“All the sacrifices that I made with my immediate family, my wife and my two boys when they asked to go on vacation and I said, no, I have to do this for football,” a situation that repeated over the last 16 years. “They have gone on a lot of things without myself and I could never get those times [back].”

Seymour said while he has decided to step away from the sport, he will wait until the season is over, but only if certain conditions are met.

“My father always told me to finish what you started,” he said, noting that while he will continue to assist Academy SC for the remainder of this season, he will not attend a single game at either the West Bay or Bodden Town fields.

“We are going to play here at Academy or at [the Cayman Islands Football Association pitch] and police must be on site or security [officers],” Seymour said.