For at least the last two years of his 21-year-old life, Kevin Fields apparently considered himself a high roller (rich ghetto gangster – Urban Dictionary). If the photographs on his Facebook page were anything to go by, Fields was more than a touch narcissistic too and might have imagined himself invincible or untouchable. The average Facebooker uploads photos of life achievements and celebrations: birthdays, graduations, weddings and the like and they join alumni groups. The posts and photographs keep friends and family members updated on life events, which they can like or comment on. Fields was the same, yet very different.
In the first place, his Facebook page was public, so that anyone who went on Facebook for any reason could have had access to his updates and photographs. Not any more. Days after the media and everyone else on social media delved into Fields’s charmed life via his Facebook posts, his page has disappeared. Available to the public up to Tuesday last, it has since been closed or made private by one of Fields’s friends, associates or family members; something they could not do or persuade him to do while he was alive.
Fields was shot dead on Sheriff Street on Monday last after grabbing a bag of money from a businessman. He attempted to escape on a CG motorcycle, but the driver accelerated too quickly causing him to fall off. Eyewitnesses said Fields then fired a shot at the businessman, who was in hot pursuit, and missed. The man returned fire hitting Fields in the neck and was able to retrieve the stolen cash. He reportedly attempted to chase after Fields’s accomplice, but he had long vanished. The accomplice is being sought by the police.
When questioned about Fields’s apparently lush life, in view of the photographs proliferating on his Facebook page with guns, a bulletproof vest, wads of cash, a firearm licence and jewellery among other things, Crime Chief Leslie James said Fields was not hitherto known by the police to be involved in criminal activities. If he had been, and the police had seen the photographs, he would have had to provide an explanation, the Crime Chief said. One assumes he would have been taken in for questioning.
What was not forthcoming from Mr James’s short interview with this newspaper, was what the police have done since the revelations on Fields. One would like to hope that it is the police force that has taken control of Fields’s Facebook page; that his list of friends and followers are being researched and where necessary, interviewed.
There may already be a wave of unfriending and page closures in the wake of the trending of the now infamous Kevin Fields, but likely Facebook can be approached to retrieve any information that might have been recently deleted.
Fields’s computer, if he had one, his smartphone, which he obviously had (he took several selfies), and other similar electronic devices could prove a gold mine for the police. They would of course need to have among their investigative team someone with the IT expertise to bypass passwords and get into hard drives.
Perhaps the police have had a look at the interior of Fields’s home to check for a match with the background in his photos in order to at least obtain a lead into where the appurtenances he so boldly flaunted could be found. That firearm licence, bulletproof vest and those guns should be of particular interest.
Having checked their records, the police have since issued a statement “informing the general public that no firearm licence had been issued” to Fields. But what if the name on the licence is not Kevin Fields? Could it have been issued to the same person under a different name? What if it belonged to someone who might have been robbed? The police could possibly make headway into solving one or more crimes. Obviously, ballistics testing would also be carried out on the gun which was in his possession at the time he was killed.
As criminals go, Fields was obviously not very shrewd. However, the fact that he was not known to the police to have been involved in criminal activities, in view of the public ‘bad man’ profile he had doesn’t say much about them either. But he must have been very confident of his friends’ loyalty and that of their friends too. That said, it will be interesting to see what the police will manage to net from their investigations into this case.