Canada-born Camille Nembhard*, who had been engaged to promoter Mikhail Thompson who was shot and killed execution-style while on a visit to Jamaica last weekend, is still trying to come to grips with his brutal murder.
Currently eight months’ pregnant, she is battling to remain calm and composed to ensure that her baby remains healthy in the face of earth-shattering news.
“The last thing he said to me was ‘Camille, I am not staying long, I know that the baby is due, but this is simply business. I am not even staying as long as some of my friends, I’ll be right back’. Instead, now, I am making arrangements to bring his body back to Canada for a funeral,” she said.
“Nothing makes sense. He didn’t want to leave me … he just went to support his friends. He loved Vybz Kartel … I can’t see him missing Freedom Street, not for anything. He was ready to go to that event but someone murdered him.”
Mikhail ‘Wayne’ Thompson, a 36 year-old Jamaica-born Canadian dancehall promoter, was brutally gunned down minutes after opening the gate of a rented Airbnb apartment on Marley Road, St Andrew on December 27. The police confirmed the killing to The Sunday Gleaner. The CCTV video surveillance of the shooting – which shows Thompson interacting briefly with a man who, before moving off, calmly takes out a gun and shoots him several times – has made the rounds on social media.
Thompson had arrived on the island two days earlier. His Instagram page showed him partying at a popular annual event on Boxing Day, but, by the following day, that same post had become more like an obits page, with friends reacting in disbelief, posting prayer and broken-heart emojis and RIPs.
The gangland-style execution has shocked the entertainment communities in Jamaica and Canada.
“The reaction is just a big part of the type of person he is, and the effect he had on dancehall in Toronto … he was a big part of the community, he supported everybody. There is not one person he would not put up a flyer for and he went to … sometimes … three parties in one night just to support other promoters, and he wasn’t getting paid to do that. He was a giver,” Camille, who is a second-generation immigrant with Jamaica-born parents, said.
Thompson organised events such as Big Breeze and King of the Dancehall and reportedly did between eight and 10 events in Toronto each year.
In the wake of her fiancé’s death, Camille, fearing for the health of her unborn child, had to seek immediate medical attention.
“I felt contractions so I checked myself into the hospital … thank God the baby is fine. His grandmother is not taking the news well. We need justice, that’s why I am making an appeal for any information that can apprehend the killers … this was a premeditated act, this was very deliberate,” she said.
Both of Thompson’s parents are deceased.
“I can’t even process the fact that this is how he died. It doesn’t seem real. It’s the why that’s the hardest part of dealing with Wayne’s death right now,” she said.
Some Toronto music insiders have complained that the Jamaican promoters did nothing to mark Thompson’s passing by way of an announcement at their events. But that is not so.
“That is a story making the rounds over here [in Canada] but at one event on December 29 in Jamaica every selector did a tribute. And we have videos of it,” a Toronto source said.
Camille refused to comment on any of that, and is instead focused on dealing with her trauma and pain, as well as the prospect of raising Wayne’s child without him by her side. She is still trying to process the fact that there is going to be a big hole in her life where Wayne used to be.
“If you had told me that he would have passed away in such a brutal way, I would never have believed it. I don’t know not one person who would want to harm him, he wasn’t out in the streets doing bad to people, he is not a gang member, he is not a drug dealer, he is not someone who puts himself in harm’s way,” Camille said.
Thompson worked as an assembly line technician at a major car manufacturing plant in Toronto.
The grieving family is now working with the Canadian High Commission in Jamaica to make arrangements to bring Thompson’s body back to Toronto for burial.
He is survived by one son, two daughters, and the daughter on the way.
“Wayne will be greatly missed,” she said.
*Surame changed as requested
