The deejay Risto Benji, 38, was shot several times on Monday evening in front of his house in Old Harbour.
Risto, short for aristocrat, and Benji, as in Benjamin, his surname, Michael Benjamin is best known for his work with Jammy and his sons. In the mid-80s, barely a teenager, he performed on the King's sound system, which then recorded him on his riddims, the Punany (Gimmi di money) or the Agony (Don’t pirate it). VP signed him in the early 90s and released an album collecting his singles, "Wickedest DJ", in 1992. That same year, Risto Benji had one of his biggest successes with the hit Passport buddy. He nevertheless remained in the shadow of the best deejays of the time, Shabba Ranks, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man.
Throughout the 90s and until the early 2000s, Risto Benji recorded sporadically, mostly for the Jammy family, but also for Buju Banton. He kept performing live, with early-evening appearances at Sting, at Sumfest or on sound systems.
Lately, Risto Benji had rather been in the news in the crime pages of the island's papers: in 2009 he was arrested for stealing a handbag and a mobile phone from a woman at knifepoint, and in 2010 he narrowly escaped a full-blown lynching after trying to steal a motorbike.
The motive for the deejay's death is still unknown.