A concerned citizen has penned an open letter to the young men of Potters following the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Leyandrew Hubbard, who was gunned down on Sunday morning while reportedly playing cards with friends beneath a roadside shed in the community. According to Antigua.news, a second young man was critically injured in the attack and remains hospitalised, fighting for his life.
The letter, addressed directly to the young men who gather daily on those same street corners, does not mourn only the dead. It issues a stark warning to the living.
"If you are reading this letter today, it means you were not the one who died in Potters," the author writes. "But the uncomfortable reality is that it could have been you."
The letter challenges young men who spend their days leaning against walls, gambling, smoking, and drinking to confront a difficult truth: that the street life they embrace offers no protection. "Bullets do not ask whether you are the intended target," it reads. "They do not care whether you were 'just there,' 'just watching,' or 'just playing cards.'"
The author paints a sobering picture of a generation losing itself to the block. Morning becomes afternoon, afternoon becomes night, and years slip by as dreams and opportunities vanish. The only thing that changes, the letter warns, is whose face appears on the next memorial T-shirt.
"The street offers no salary. It offers no pension. It offers no future. It offers only the false comfort of belonging, until violence reminds everyone just how fragile that illusion really is."
The letter calls on young men to redirect their energy. Hours spent gambling, it argues, could be invested in learning a trade. Conversations under a shed could become business meetings. The drive that keeps young men returning to the corner could instead be channelled into building careers, raising families, and creating something lasting.
"Your life has value," the author writes. "You are capable of far more than simply surviving another day on a corner."
The letter closes with an urgent plea, asking young men not to wait until their name is read on the evening news, until their mother is identifying their body, or until friends are wearing T-shirts bearing their image.
"If this letter reaches one young man and convinces him to walk away from that street today, then perhaps one family will be spared the unimaginable pain that the Hubbard family is now enduring."
The letter is signed simply: A Concerned Citizen.
