Bermuda's latest fatal shooting victim, Raymond Troy (Yankee) Rawlins, was described by detectives investigating his murder yesterday as "a well-known figure in the Court Street area".

That is perhaps to put it mildly. The nickname "Yankee" will be familiar to anyone on the Island who reads the court reports in The Royal Gazette or takes an interest in the Island's criminal underworld and the colourful characters within it.

The 47-year-old, with his mouthful of gold and looming physical presence, could certainly be described as a distinctive figure. If not quite a household name in Bermuda, the self-confessed former drug dealer and crack addict was certainly notorious to many — including the Police.

This newspaper understands he was viewed as a kingpin in the drugs and gang scene and was a key target for Police.

Most recently, the father-of-eight and grandfather hit the headlines after being jailed for four-and-a-half months in January for possessing $3,500 worth of crack cocaine, which he said was for his personal use.

But it wasn't the drugs case that gained attention so much as the fact that during his Magistrates' Court trial he claimed, eyes brimming with tears, to have been the intended target of a volley of gunfire on Court Street.

The shots were fired outside his C&R Discount shop on December 16 — the same store where Yankee's father Raymond Burgess and 31-year-old brother Raymond Burgess Jr. were shot seven months before.

A 22-year-old man has since been charged with wounding Mr. Rawlins with intent to do him grievous bodily harm on December 16 and is facing a Supreme Court trial for that and other charges, all of which he denies.

Yankee clearly knew he had enemies — as one would expect for a man with his criminal past and alleged "gang" affiliations.

In 1985, aged just 22, he was already a drug dealer when his best friend Aaron Easton was stabbed to death at the home they shared in Talbot Apartments, off Laffan Street, in Pembroke.

And he had gained the infamous nickname "Yankee Boy" — a reference to the teenage years he spent in New Jersey.

Mr. Rawlins described his drugs business at the Supreme Court trial in 2003 of Stanford Archibald, who was eventually convicted of killing 19-year-old Mr. Easton. A prosecutor said the murder was one of the most brutal in Bermuda's history.

Yankee – himself an initial suspect in the case – cried as he told the jury how he found out his friend had been murdered.

He told the court Mr. Easton was bagging up drugs on the floor in their apartment the day before he was slaughtered, listing the "eight ounces of weed, $14,000 in cash and cocaine" in their possession.

The loss of Mr. Easton wasn't the only high-profile bereavement suffered by Yankee. In December 2001, another brother, Steven Dill, known as "Peppy" or "Pepe", died after suffering an asthma attack at the Prison Farm in Ferry Reach.

Mr. Rawlins was devastated and spoke angrily about the neglect he claimed led to his brother's death.

An off-duty prison officer who later offered Yankee condolences over what happened to Mr. Dill was badly beaten in a nightclub. One of the assailants was Yankee's friend Shaki Crockwell, who was shot dead in 2007.

Less well-known was that Yankee lost his first granddaughter in 2007, when she was aged just seven months. He told Magistrates' Court during his trial for crack cocaine possession late last year that the child was born prematurely to his first daughter.

Mr. Rawlins said he was unable to visit his grieving daughter in the States because he could not get a visa due to previous convictions.

The daughter's mother had died, he said, and she didn't have anyone else. He said he'd been clean of drugs for 13 to 15 years at that point, after previous heroin and cocaine abuse.

But he relapsed in March 2008, when he began using cocaine again and considered himself an addict. "It was to the point where my bank account was no more," he told the trial.

Drugs and violence were recurring themes in his life. In 1994, he pleaded guilty to a string of charges in Magistrates' Court, including slapping two women, violently resisting arrest and drugs possession — all committed while on probation.

Other convictions collected over the years included using threatening words and behaviour towards Police.

But Mr. Rawlins was also a businessman who ran several stores on Court Street, where he lived, and a community figure who was said to organise free family fun days at Clearwater Beach.

Yankee told The Royal Gazette in an April 2004 interview that he had a crew, named Frontline, which consisted of a group of guys who hung out in the Hamilton area.

He insisted then that outbreaks of violence were being sparked by rivalries over women and turf, as opposed to drugs.

This paper understands that Yankee was recently affiliated with the Parkside gang, which has been locked in a deadly rivalry with the 42 crew in recent months.

Assistant Police Commissioner David Mirfield said yesterday that the murder of Mr. Rawlins appeared to be gang-related.