A drive-by shooting last night has left a 21 year old man dead and three others injured. Floyd McFadzean Jr was driving his Ford Fusion on Cemetery Road with 20 year old Deon Gladden, 21 year old Troy Gentle, and 21 year old Jaheim Bent inside. As they drove in front of First Choice Pharmacy, two men on a motorcycle drove past and opened fire on the vehicle. The vehicle crashed into a fence with McFadzean dead at the wheel.
His family was still in a state of shock this morning since they know McFadzean to be a family man who causes no trouble. His father believes he was not the intended target. Courtney Menzies spoke with him today and has this story.
The city saw its third drive-by shooting fatality last night but the victim in this case may not have been the gunman's target. That's because 21 year old Floyd McFadzean Jr was, by all accounts, a hardworking man who got in with the wrong crowd.
According to his father, he came home after work as usual, but he headed out later that night, and that was the last time he saw his son alive.
Floyd McFadzean Sr., Father of Deceased
"Yesterday evening he came home from work, tired, he said he wanted to rest. And he went to sleep, around 8:30 he got up, he said he wanted to put some gas in his car so I just told him, hold a little money extra for the gas. And he went, put in his gas, and he called me and said, dad, he said he would take a little circle. And from there I didn't hear anything else about him again until this morning the police called me and told me he died in the car. In the car he did it too, I always told him that car… I don't know what to say."
McFadzean and 3 other young men were in this vehicle. He'd just driven away from Atlantic Bank after taking out cash from the ATM - the receipt still in his lap - when the gunman, riding a motorcycle, pulled up and began firing shots. All four men were hit, but McFadzean lost control of the car and crashed into the Constitution Park fence.
His father believes he was still alive in the moments before arriving at the hospital.
Floyd McFadzean Sr., Father of Deceased
"That was a scene I would have never wanted to see in my life because I saw him sitting in the car and it was like he was just staring at me but I already knew he was motionless in that car and I tried to reach him but the police told me I can't go to him because I have something in me like a feeling that he hadn't died because when I got to the hospital with him, he was still warm and limber, it wasn't like he was getting stiff or anything so I think he died in the car or something but the police didn't want us to go near him."
But their family isn't gang affiliated, and the younger McFadzean spent most of his time at home, so his father believes the gunman was after someone else in the vehicle.
Floyd McFadzean Sr., Father of Deceased
"My son isn't in any gang or anything, he's a family guy. Loving, everything he does, anybody asks him to do anything, he would do it for you. Anything he does. Work, the same people from his work who just came, they said he was the best guy in the work that did anything for anybody. Right now the work today is shut down because of him, nobody wants to work today."
Courtney Menzies:
"But you said that you believe the target was one of the other guys in the vehicle?"
Floyd McFadzean Sr., Father of Deceased
"Yes I believe that because the guy that was in the car ran out and left him right there so they were the target in the vehicle, not my son. My son is a very innocent guy, he doesn't give trouble, he just takes his little drink and we hang together and he goes to see his girlfriend and that's it with him. We don't know him as any gang boy, it's the friends he's with hat put him in that trouble there."
And now there's a gaping hole of loss in this close knit family:
Floyd McFadzean Sr., Father of Deceased
"He's a very good guy, he's straight, he doesn't have any company around that I know, he doesn't have any company around me because he's always with his family most of the time, we go all about to the district and go all around together so I don't know him as any guy that anybody wants to kill him or something."
"Right now it's like everything is missing because even when I came home this morning, me and my wife opened the house and it was like an empty house, nobody in there. And he's the guy that always jumps up and does something in the house to get any one of us vex or anything but that is the way we go in the house but can't do anything."
The other two drive-by shootings, which took the lives of Giovanni Ramirez and Joseph Lee Garcia, were believed to be gang related.