Star Soccer Player, Phillip Tisson, Shot Dead in Brooklyn

By Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times

A member of the St. Lucia national soccer team was shot dead early Monday in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn just hours after he aced the winning goal to send his team to the championship.

Isidore Phillip Tisson was sitting in the back seat of a parked vehicle outside the Tropiks nightclub on Utica Avenue when he suffered a single gun shot wound to the head, police said. The 27-year-old soccer star had stopped to buy bananas around 4 a.m. before heading home when the murder took place.

Tisson had just entered the vehicle with companion Shawnette Justin, 24, when an unknown person approached from behind, and opened fire.

The bullet exited Tisson's head and struck Justin who was seated next to him, in the chest. She is in stable condition at Brookdale Hospital, police said. Tissan and his teammates had been celebrating their 1-0 victory over St. Kitts in the Digicel Caribbean Cup tournament the night of this senseless tragedy.

"I heard the noise and then I felt the pain," the wounded woman, Shawnette Justin, 24, told the 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."

The other occupants in the vehicle were uninjured by the gunshot, The NY Daily News reported. The driver drove as fast as he could to get Tisson to the hospital, but by the time they arrived, the athlete was dead.

"He didn't say anything on the way. His eyes were moving a little, but then nothing," said Justin. "I was holding his head, but then I couldn't any longer."

Martin Daniel, president of the St. Lucia Soccer Alliance USA Inc described Tisson as a "big teddy bear" and a "gentle giant." He told the NY Daily News that "everyone was surprised" and that he couldn't imagine Tisson getting into a fight.

Investigators are looking into whether Tisson was involved in an argument with someone at The Tropiks before leaving, but teammate Simon Polius told the NY Daily News that Tisson had been threatened about his relationship with Justin.

"One day somebody told him, 'If you don't leave her alone' he would kill him," Polius said. "She had a boyfriend back home."

Justin, who is a schoolteacher in St. Lucia, insists she and Tisson share nothing but a friendship that dates back to their childhood and denied there was any former or current boyfriend who may have threatened Tisson.

"I feel that my whole world is falling apart," his mother, Rosleyn Tisson, told The News by phone. "He was very serious about what he was doing."

Relatives said it was a day of mourning in St. Lucia. Tisson had been in New York since May for the tournament.

The team's coach says the team plans to stay in the tournament, titled the Caribbean Football Cup, which is played at Thomas Jefferson High School every year. They are scheduled to play Jamaica in the final next week.

"We'll be playing for Phillip," the coach said. "That's what he would have wanted."

Tisson, a midfielder, played club football for clubs throughout the Caribbean including Canaries, Anse La Raye Young Stars and Helenites and leaves behind a 3-year-old daughter.

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