T&T has lost two po­ten­tial "bright stars" with the slay­ing of Laven­tille teens Deneil­son Smith and Mark Richards who were well-ad­just­ed young men, act­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

Deyals­ingh spoke about the slain youths dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to an op­po­si­tion mo­tion on ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­ri­als in Par­lia­ment, yes­ter­day.

Smith and Richards were mur­dered af­ter they were pulled out of a taxi on their way home from school on Thurs­day af­ter­noon and shot dead.

It has prompt­ed ac­tion from Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley who an­nounced yes­ter­day that sol­diers would be de­ployed to pa­trol the hills of Laven­tille per­ma­nent­ly. Two men de­scribed as be­ing of in­ter­est in the case have al­so been held by po­lice.

The mur­ders of the teens al­so fea­tured in re­marks by MPs from both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, in and out of Par­lia­ment, yes­ter­day.

Deyals­ingh said he want­ed to cor­rect a pre­vi­ous state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion which stat­ed that one of the boys had missed school. He said he had checked with the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer and the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and con­firmed that both teens had at­tend­ed school that day and had been mod­el stu­dents.

He not­ed one had been cap­tain of the school's crick­et team and the oth­er was a school pre­fect.

"Ex­cel­lent peo­ple...we have lost two po­ten­tial bright stars," Deyals­ingh said.

Deyals­ingh said a high-lev­el gov­ern­ment team in­clud­ing the min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and MPs for the ar­eas in which the boys lived would be vis­it­ing their school and par­ents and giv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty their full sup­port.

"We've arranged coun­selling and this Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted as it has al­ways been to the com­mu­ni­ty," he added.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, ex­press­ing deep con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty, con­demned the mur­ders. He told T&T Guardian the au­thor­i­ties would not stop un­til they had brought the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald told re­porters she was sure the area MP would be tak­ing care of the youths' fu­ner­als. She said she nor­mal­ly does that for her con­stituen­cy and MPs usu­al­ly take "up the slack" on this and a So­cial De­vel­op­ment grant was al­so avail­able.

She added, "I will be vis­it­ing the fam­i­lies to­mor­row. This shows our con­cern and our sup­port to let them know there are peo­ple who care about them. This sit­u­a­tion is very sad. lt's cause for con­cern. It hap­pened in an area that bor­ders two con­stituen­cies–Laven­tille West and Port-of-Spain South–though I un­der­stand the boys both live in So­gren Trace which is Laven­tille West."