WEST LITTLE RIVER, Fla. – Dozens met Friday night at the Village Flea Market and Mall in Miami-Dade County’s West Little River neighborhood to remember Rev. Gregory Boyd.
Members of his church, the New Birth Harvest Outreach Ministries Churches of Deliverance, tried to comfort Dorothy Boyd. The grieving widow was married to him for 23 years.
“He was my friend — my best friend, my fishing partner,” Dorothy Boyd said. “He was a great man.”
On Sept. 10, she said Rev. Boyd left their home to buy dinner for the family and never came back. He died in the crossfire of a shooting that followed an argument caught in a Facebook Live video.
“I told him, ‘I’ll see you when you get home.’ It took so long, so I started calling him and he didn’t answer his phone,” she said.
Dorothy Boyd said that she was in denial and in shock after she received the call with the news that the love of her life had been the victim of gun violence.
“I just started saying, 'No! Not my husband! My husband didn’t get shot!”
A Local 10 News reporter and photojournalists were among the many witnesses of the fatal shooting. They were reporting on another shooting that left a 7-year-old Alana Washington dead.
Dorothy Boyd said she has a message for the gunman: “Put the guns down!”
The loss, she said, is beyond words can explain because he deserved better from the community he loved so much and had devoted his life to helping through the church.
“He was a good family man,” she said. “He taught my kids well. He taught them well. He left a good legacy.”
As a Christian woman in mourning, she also said, “I forgive them, young people.”
Miami-Dade detectives have yet to make an arrest in the case. They have been asking anyone with information about the shooting to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
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