RANDOLPH Holder, the New York Police Officer, who was gunned down Tuesday night while trying to apprehend a suspected robber in Harlem, U.S.A., has been described as a kind-hearted soul who reached out for the American dream in order to help his family in Guyana.His brother, grandmother and best friend in Guyana Wednesday shared fond memories of a young man who didn’t fuss about much, but was committed to working hard given the “rough life” circumstances forced him into as a boy.
Officer Holder grew up in Georgetown, and until 12 years ago when he left for the U.S., he slept on the same bed with his brother Kelon Noel, whom he had promised to help take to America for a better life.
“It was one of his dreams,” Noel said of his brother’s move to the United States. He had promised to take care of him until he could get him over to the U.S.
The two boys had different fathers, but they were the only children for their mother, Melrose Lovell, who died of cancer when she was just 38. At the time, Randolph was 17 and his brother was just seven years old.
At that point, they were left in the care of their grandmother Elizabeth Lovell, and an aunt, Maureen. They all lived in the same house, which was destroyed by fire in 2002.
Noel recalls that his brother really did take care of him, even at times helping to wash his clothes by hand.“He was more than amazing. Words can’t describe the person he was. He was so loving to me.”
The grandmother recalls that Holder’s first attempt to go to the U.S. was unsuccessful; he was denied a visa. Eventually, Holder’s father, who lives in America, applied for a permanent residence visa for him. This time around, with anxiousness, he made sure he was at the U.S. embassy at 3 a.m., some four hours before the scheduled appointment.
“He always had to be number one,” the grandmother recalls.
After she heard the news on Tuesday night, Ms Lovell said she could not sleep. “I could have died. The phone fell out of my hands and I had to sit in a corner. I felt weak, weak, weak. Like I didn’t know what to do; like I was confused, I didn’t know what to do,” she recalls.
“He was an alright person; cool and mild, quite.”
When Holder told her that he had become a policeman, she recalled that he said he enjoyed the job and was trying his best at it.
“He had loved it, you know,” she said, clutching a photo of her son in his uniform.
The two would communicate regularly. Whenever he did not call, she would call from the neighbourhood internet café. They had the usual casual conversation to check up on each other. There was no big concern; Randolph would only talk about not being able to arrange his clothes as his grandmother would.
“He would say, ‘I miss you with that, because you always had everything neat and nice.’”
Holder remembered to be kind to his grandmother. He would send her cash gifts for her birthday, for Mother’s Day and for Christmas. In fact, she was looking forward to him coming home this Christmas.
She was already thinking of what fish to fry for him. “He loved fish; he loved fish. I would cook it for him and he would say he enjoyed it.”
The officer’s brother said he always told him to be careful on the job, though Holder never gave an indication that he faced dangers on the job.“He would always say,” ‘Same old, same old, work is same old,’” Noel recalls.
“When I heard that news, it left me traumatised.” A relative gave the news form the U.S. as it came in. Randolph was shot. He was hospitalised. He was critical, but stable.
Noel said a prayer for his only brother.
And then, the dreadful news came.
Noel didn’t believe it until he saw it on the international news broadcasts.
“Up to now, I am still trying to process that. The thing had me real shake up. Up to now I have a migraine headache and the headache isn’t going away.”
Holder’s best friend in Guyana, Quincy Christian, is still coming to grips with what happened Tuesday night. “We came up rough; we always tried to make good of every little thing. Everything we acquired, we shared equally.”
Christian’s family rented the upper flat and Holder’s family rented the lower flat of the building in Durban Street, Lodge, an area of Georgetown Christian described as “scary.”
The two were best friends from the age of three; they walked to school together, and when they were teenagers, they worked at the same summer jobs painting or in a mechanic shop until they were able to save enough to buy bicycles to ride to school.
“The type of life we lived, we always wanted to do better for our families. For him, going to America was the best thing.”
Christian recalls that whenever they spoke on the phone, Holder would describe the job with the NYPD as scary, but that was no trouble for him.
“He always used to say he was from Lodge, so he could survive anything.”
However he didn’t survive the bullet of the robber who shot at killed him Tuesday night in Harlem.
By Neil Marks
