Rhon­dor Dowlat

Res­i­dents of Bha­ga­loo Street, Git­tens Lane and Chris Ter­race West in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day made a des­per­ate plea for sol­diers to come to their res­cue.

The res­i­dents prac­ti­cal­ly begged a Guardian Me­dia Ltd team to act on their be­half and make their re­quest pub­lic, with the hope that the Gov­ern­ment and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel would heed their re­quest.

"Bring in the sol­diers!" shout­ed one res­i­dent.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said, "We need the sol­diers' in­ter­ven­tion. Once they could come in here and not beat up the in­no­cent peo­ple here, and once they could come and re­al­ly do their jobs, we will have no prob­lem with them com­ing in­to the area to set up camp in a bid to re­store the peace we once had, the love and the uni­ty that ex­ist­ed up to two weeks ago."

An up­surge in al­leged gang war­fare over the past two weeks has left the hous­es, cars and par­lours of sev­er­al res­i­dents rid­dled with bul­lets. Sev­er­al fam­i­lies have al­ready moved out of the area, some go­ing as far as To­ba­go.

A raid on the week­end by a com­bined force of po­lice, sol­diers and oth­er agen­cies net­ted ten sus­pects, two home-made guns and a small quan­ti­ty of co­caine. Po­lice in­volved in the ex­er­cise said gang mem­bers were tipped off by oth­er of­fi­cers.

"They fed up. By 7 pm every­body have to be in­side. The peo­ple fed up with gun­men rid­ing and walk­ing past their hous­es and shoot­ing it up. They are afraid for their lives, so some of them de­cid­ed to move out and re­turn when peace is re­stored," one res­i­dent, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who was prompt­ed, coaxed and ap­plaud­ed by the large group of res­i­dents who came out to speak with the T&T Guardian and CNC3, even­tu­al­ly spoke of the wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion on cam­era but re­fused to dis­close his name.

"I want the po­lice to put every­one of them at rest be­cause they are bring­ing shame to Is­lam. They pray­ing and then com­ing in here with their guns and shoot­ing peo­ple, shoot­ing homes all in the name of Ji­had. They are ter­ror­ists, they are Isis, they are every­thing else but true Mus­lims like some of us. I can make a bet that none of them can quote a verse in the Q'uran. I call them ko­far, mean­ing noth­ing good," the res­i­dent said.

"If we were look­ing for war, we would have been go­ing over on their side and shoot­ing them up too but we not on that. They com­ing through Boss Lane and shoot­ing up hous­es and then on­to the block here (Chris Ter­race West). We want back our street and if I have to be killed for speak­ing the truth, well so be it," he said.

"It's all about ex­tor­tion. They com­ing here and try­ing to ex­tort mon­ey and stuff from the el­ders. They went to one woman and de­mand­ed that she pay them $12,000. For what? To live in their own homes?" he said.

A 67-year-old woman, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said she had lived in the area for 33 years and it was the first time the area was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this kind of ri­val­ry.

"My grand­son was shot twice in two weeks. All this is non­sense. I helped some of them to go to school and they just turn on us. Re­cent­ly, I picked up a shell in my yard and I didn't know what it was. I was told that it was a bul­let shell from a gun. When we hear the dogs bark­ing we can­not even peep out from our win­dows be­cause they shoot­ing up the place. We need the po­lice and sol­diers to come help us. Here was nev­er like this."

An­oth­er res­i­dent iden­ti­fied as Rol­ly Brown, 57, said he was a Mus­lim and he did not con­done what was hap­pen­ing in the area.

Over the past few days, mem­bers of an op­pos­ing gang re­leased two videos on Face­book where they spoke of the on­go­ing war. They claimed that they were be­ing at­tacked by gang mem­bers from Bha­ga­loo Street. They al­so named po­lice of­fi­cers al­leged­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with res­i­dents there.