Jensen La Vende

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mur­der of Lance Cpl Kay­o­de Thomas con­tin­ued yes­ter­day with res­i­dents of the Bev­er­ly Hills and op­pos­ing Des­per­lie Cres­cent and St Paul Street, East Port-of-Spain, point­ing fin­gers at each oth­er for the crime.Res­i­dents of St Paul Street told CNC3 news yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Thomas' killing sol­diers, wear­ing masks, came in­to the area and as­sault­ed them.

They say the masked men could be any­one and were fear­ful for their lives. The res­i­dents claimed they could not be be­hind the shoot­ing as they could not go in­to "en­e­my ter­ri­to­ry".Their claim that they were abused had not been re­port­ed to the reg­i­ment as of 7 pm last night when the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed the Reg­i­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Cap­tain Ste­fan Af­fon­zo.Af­fon­zo said no re­port was made to them about the al­leged beat­ing and called on any­one who may have suf­fered at the hands of reg­i­ment of­fi­cers to come for­ward.

Af­fon­zo al­so de­nied sol­diers were pa­trolling the area by them­selves but were with po­lice. How­ev­er, short­ly af­ter 6 am, when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the St Paul Street area a group of sol­diers were seen on pa­trol by them­selves.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, res­i­dents of Bev­er­ly Hills where Thomas lived de­nied they were re­spon­si­ble for the shoot­ing and blamed ri­val gang mem­bers.

The res­i­dents claimed the shoot­ing was un­pro­voked and ran­dom. They said gun­men would have opened fire on any car in the area and un­for­tu­nate­ly the fa­ther of eight was the tar­get.Al­so speak­ing to the me­dia was Thomas' moth­er, Mar­va Thomas, who said her son was un­de­serv­ing of the death he re­ceived.Laugh­ing lusti­ly at any joke "Miss Mar­va", as she was re­ferred to, said if she did not laugh she would cry but had to stay strong for her fam­i­ly.

She said she could not give her son's killers the sat­is­fac­tion of tak­ing her son and her joy."I can't give them the two. Af­ter I fight to raise him in the right way this is the pay I get. That child was not to go that way," she said, adding that her next step is to care for her sev­en grand­sons and one grand­daugh­ter left by her on­ly son.Thomas said her son would be buried on Mon­day un­der full mil­i­tary rites. She added she was vis­it­ed by MP for the area Mar­lene Mc Don­ald but did not wish to di­vulge what took place dur­ing the meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 11.30 pm on Sun­day, Thomas was dri­ving along Plai­sance Quar­ry Road, John John, when a group of men stepped in front his Maz­da 323 and opened fire. Thomas, who was head­ing to the Bev­er­ly Hills home of his moth­er ran off theroad and crashed. He died at the scene.Po­lice re­cov­ered 30 spent shells at the scene of the shoot­ing. Mem­bers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

One day af­ter Thomas was killed po­lice of­fi­cers dis­trib­uted fly­ers in the Laven­tille area call­ing on res­i­dents to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the killing con­fi­den­tial­ly.