An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The mur­der toll con­tin­ued to climb yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the shoot­ing deaths of two cousins and the wound­ing of three oth­ers, in­clud­ing a four-year-old child, dur­ing an at­tack linked to gang war­fare en­velop­ing the Mal­ick com­mu­ni­ty.

Ger­ald and Ke­mo Cal­liste ap­peared to be the main tar­gets of two gun­men dur­ing an at­tack out­side Rox­ann’s Learn­ing and Child­care Cen­tre at Base­ment Road, Sev­enth Av­enue, Barataria.

Ger­ald, 36, was killed as he dropped off his daugh­ter to catch a school bus, which trans­ports school chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty to their des­ti­na­tions, as he was ac­cus­tomed to do­ing every day. Ke­mo, 32, died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) a short while lat­er.

A 48-year-old woman and her four-year-old God­son were al­so hurt. The woman was shot in the breast as the gun­men sprayed bul­lets at their tar­gets. She suf­fered a bro­ken col­lar­bone, un­der­went emer­gency surgery at the PoS­GH and was lat­er ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

Her God­son was shot in the leg and was al­so treat­ed and ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

A fifth man was al­so treat­ed for gun­shot in­juries and ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

Con­demn­ing the ac­tions of the gun­men, who were said to have been ly­ing in wait at the busy junc­tion, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials claimed the shoot­ing was gang-re­lat­ed.

One of­fi­cer said, “Ke­mo Cal­liste was well known to of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion. We have in­ter­act­ed with him on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.”

The in­ci­dent left tod­dlers, par­ents and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty scared and in tears, prompt­ing the TTPS Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) to im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vate sup­port mech­a­nisms.

As news of the shoot­ing spread, rel­a­tives of the Cal­liste men flocked to the scene. Un­der a per­sis­tent driz­zle, they hugged one an­oth­er and cried open­ly as they lament­ed the crime sit­u­a­tion.

One woman ex­pressed anger that Ger­ald’s bul­let-rid­dled body re­mained ex­posed on the road in front of the preschool up to two hours af­ter the shoot­ing.

She ar­gued, “They coul­da cov­er the man, as them young chirren see­ing that...how you think that gonna af­fect them men­tal­ly? They trau­ma­tised...hear­ing the gun­shots and now see­ing the man ly­ing down dey....oh God man, what them think­ing?”

Oth­er res­i­dents said while gun­shots were a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in the com­mu­ni­ty, the killings were no longer con­fined to on­ly al­leged gang mem­bers.

The junc­tion where the shoot­ing oc­curred was said to be very busy, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the morn­ing and evening pe­ri­ods, with par­ents drop­ping off and col­lect­ing young­sters at the preschool and for a school bus which trans­ports the old­er chil­dren to their schools.

Clutch­ing her grand­daugh­ter close as she hur­ried to her car through the rain, a woman, who re­fused to dis­close her name, said she rushed to the preschool short­ly af­ter learn­ing of the shoot­ing to col­lect the scared child.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “f@%*ing fright­en­ing,” she said it would be up to the par­ents to de­cide if the child would con­tin­ue to at­tend the fa­cil­i­ty in the com­ing days.

Guardian Me­dia was told the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion VW­SU of­fi­cers are plan­ning to con­duct a stress de­brief­ing ses­sion at the child­care cen­tre.

A se­nior TTPS of­fi­cial ex­plained, “This will be aimed at pro­vid­ing sup­port to teach­ers, par­ents and chil­dren in the af­ter­math of this trau­mat­ic event. It is al­ways an un­for­tu­nate oc­cur­rence when per­sons lose their lives through vi­o­lence.”

Thank­ing res­i­dents for their co­op­er­a­tion in try­ing to make the Barataria and Mor­vant com­mu­ni­ties safer, the se­nior of­fi­cer said, “We ap­pre­ci­ate it, but please do not stop. I want to urge you to con­tin­ue to part­ner with us and share with us, what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion that you may have in solv­ing this mat­ter and any oth­er mat­ter.”

Mean­while, NEDM Snr Supt Mervyn Ed­wards warned the crim­i­nals, “De­sist. Stop what you are do­ing.”

He added, “A few of you are try­ing to un­leash ter­ror on the com­mu­ni­ty. The NED, un­der my lead­er­ship, will con­tin­ue to at­tack you and re­lent­less­ly pur­sue you and bring you be­fore the court of law to be dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly. You need to stop what you are do­ing as we go about mak­ing our na­tion safe.”

De­scrib­ing the shoot­ing as sad, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin as­sured in­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way and that the au­thor­i­ties were re­ly­ing on ef­fec­tive in­tel­li­gence to solve the mur­ders.

Say­ing they will be re­view­ing CCTV footage from sur­round­ing busi­ness­es and homes, he said, “We con­tin­ue to ask the pub­lic, if there is any in­for­ma­tion that they can give us to deal with this, we can and will deal with it to the best of our abil­i­ty.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land said the in­ci­dent un­der­scored the fact that “cer­tain el­e­ments were not rest­ing.” He said the ac­tions of these few meant the au­thor­i­ties could not rest.

“First it was a hos­pi­tal, now a school. We will not have it. We have a plan and we will con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute the plan,” Scot­land said.