Bullet Extinguishes Bright Life of Soccer Player Isidore Phillip Tisson

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- If a stranger had wandered onto this dusty pitch hard off Flatlands Avenue, they wouldn't necessarily know at first. They'd see the swarms of fans squeezed tightly into bleacher seats and maybe sway to the thumping reggae music and inhale the aroma of fried codfish and goat stew cooking alongside callaloo and pots of rice and beans.

What a joyous carnival, they might think, and then they'd notice most everyone was wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the picture of a smiling man on the front. If they were near the sideline they might hear the sobs of a father, his gentle veneer broken when the St. Lucian national anthem began to play. They'd spy the detectives darting about, trying not to be intrusive as they continued to investigate a troubling murder mystery.

Even in the thick of grief, the game, the match, the grand final, had to go on. And so St. Lucia took the field without Isidore Phillip Tisson (right), the strapping striker who had been gunned down, execution-style, on a Brooklyn street six days earlier.

After losing the Digicel Caribbean Cup championship to Jamaica in a 1-0 nail-biter Sunday, the St. Lucian players would say they felt as if they had played the match with an extra man. They swore they could sense Tisson's presence, hear echoes of his command to never let up, and they nodded when someone mentioned he might have been the difference-maker against Jamaica, the powerhouse that had just captured a sixth consecutive title.

"I've never been a part of a game like that before," said St. Lucia's Simon Polius. "It's been such a hard week, such a sad week. That was the hardest game I ever played."

Said Able James, another St. Lucia player: "We played for our brother, our teammate. We played for our country. I am just crushed that we couldn't win in his memory."

The 27-year-old Tisson was almost always the biggest man on the pitch, described by those who knew him as a tough guy with sizzling feet between the lines but a gentle giant once the final horn blew. He arrived in New York in May, to compete for his home island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean Cup, a tournament in its 19th year that features 12 teams from the Caribbean and South America and that ends, in a burst of festivity, on Labor Day weekend.

"He came here to play sports and he died, for no logical reason," Phillip Alcee, the father who lives in Maryland, said of his son. "He always had one dream and that was to be a sportsman and represent his country. He did that and he did it well. I'm very proud of him."

One of the top strikers in St. Lucia's World Cup qualifying campaign, Tisson led his team in scoring in this summer's Caribbean Cup, notching his fifth goal with typical verve. It was the goal that defeated St. Kitts-Nevis in the Aug. 29 semifinals, the goal that lifted St. Lucia into the Cup championship for the first time.

It was a goal that, rightly, needed to be celebrated.

After a feast at the team's clubhouse, Tisson and some of his teammates went to a nightclub called Tropix in Crown Heights. Tisson loved dancing almost as much as he loved soccer, said his friends, and he wasn't shy about asking the deejay to give shout-outs to him, to his teammates, to St. Lucia finally reaching the championships. Those same friends swear Tisson wasn't drinking, just dancing his heart out on a hot summer night in New York that, before anyone knew, had turned into early Monday morning.

It was around 4 a.m. when Tisson left the club and went with Shawnette Justin, a childhood friend from St. Lucia, to a nearby bodega to buy bananas, perfect food to ward off lactic acid related cramps. They and two other women were sitting in Tisson's car, just a short distance from Tropix, when a gunman crept up and opened fire.

A single .45 caliber bullet pierced Tisson's skull, exited and struck Justin, who was seated next to him, in the chest. Police said Tisson was dead before he reached the hospital. Justin, a schoolteacher, is in stable condition, with a slug still lodged in her lung. Two other women in the car were not hurt.

Six days later, on a gorgeous late summer afternoon that would have been a perfect backdrop to this Caribbean carnival if it weren't marred by such unspeakable tragedy, NYPD detectives mingled with the crowds ringing Jefferson field, the gunman still at large. The detectives refused to comment other than to say the investigation is ongoing, but the neighborhood whispers hung over the Cup championship like a heavy fog.

Inside the Tropix nightclub that Sunday night, there had been an argument between a man and one of the women who later found her way to Tisson's car. Tisson was said to have played peacemaker, a gentleman trying to calm a heated situation. One source said police suspect the man saw her get into Tisson's car with the other women, and ambushed the four, his bullets intended not for Tisson but another target.

"I heard the noise and then I felt the pain," Justin, 24, told the New York Daily News in a bedside interview at Brookdale University Hospital. "When I turned to see what was wrong, I saw the blood coming from his head.

"Why would someone want to do it? Nobody deserved that."

"I heard the noise and then I felt the pain. When I turned to see what was wrong, I saw the blood coming from his head. Why would someone want to do it? Nobody deserved that."
-- Shawnette Justin By all accounts, Tisson was, as Martin Daniel put it, "a big teddy bear who wouldn't hurt anyone." Daniel, president of the St. Lucia New York team, said that while he didn't know Tisson until he arrived in Brooklyn about 10 weeks ago, the soccer player's exuberance and kind demeanor were quick to shine.

"After he'd score a goal he loved to do a celebration dance, but it wasn't rude or disrespectful to the other team," Daniel said. "It was all about how much he loved life and playing the game. The fans would always comment on how much they enjoyed seeing him dance.

"Who would want to execute a man like that? None of this makes any sense."

Daniel and other tournament officials insist there were no simmering feuds between the Caribbean Cup New York teams, no riffs that spilled over into the Brooklyn streets. One detective echoed that sentiment, telling FanHouse the NYPD investigation thus far had found nothing but camaraderie and healthy rivalry between the teams.

To be sure, Tisson and his teammates couldn't wait for Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend. Last year the St. Lucia side took third in the tournament, but since then they had greatly improved defensively, giving up only a stingy number of goals across the 15 weeks of competition. Tisson, a brilliant ball controller, was rated in the top 10 of the 288 players competing, according to Fred Ballantyne, the president of the Caribbean Cup. Plenty of professional scouts tended to show up on the final day, and while the St. Lucia team had its share of amateur prospects, the players were mostly keen to knock Jamaica from its perennial crown.

"This is our time," Tisson was said to have told his teammates in the heady euphoria after his goal put St. Lucia in the championship.

The kid who grew up in the small, peaceful fishing village of Canaries had achieved his dream of being a sportsman, of representing his country. Sunday, he knew, would be a kaleidoscope of competitive soccer mixed with Caribbean food and people laughing and partying and, no doubt, dancing. He told friends he wished his three-year-old daughter could be here, to enjoy the carnival atmosphere and watch daddy play.

Outside the locker room following Jamaica's 1-nil hard-fought win, Alcee, Tisson's father, stood with the flag of St. Lucia draped around his shoulders. He wasn't crying anymore; he had no tears left, he said. Following the funeral in Brooklyn Thursday, he will take his son home to St. Lucia for burial. Alcee's voice was hoarse, his body drained, but not even the dulcet calypso sounds could drown this father's message.

"I will not rest. Until I die, I will be preaching to end the violence," he said. "Enough is enough. This violence has to stop."

The culinary selections on this sun-drenched Sunday had indeed been delicious, the music hypnotizing, and tournament insiders said it seemed that both the Jamaican and St. Lucia sides played on a higher, almost surreal level. By the end, it's a wonder any player had energy left for the customary handshakes, but they did, with the Jamaican players saying they lifted their game out of respect for Tisson's competitive spirit.

There was no dancing.