Renu­ka Singh

With­in 24 hours sev­en peo­ple were shot and killed, while an­oth­er four were shot and wound­ed through­out the coun­try.

Among the sev­en, five were mur­dered and two were killed by the po­lice.

Three of the mur­ders took place in Laven­tille, while the oth­er two killings oc­curred in Pe­nal and Ve­ga de Oropouche, San­gre Grande.

The Laven­tille mur­ders took place de­spite the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Fri­day that sol­diers would im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn to the streets to weed out crim­i­nal el­e­ments and al­so be­come a per­ma­nent fix­ture in ar­eas such as Laven­tille, En­ter­prise, Diego Mar­tin, To­ba­go, and oth­er parts of T&T.

Row­ley's call came short­ly af­ter Thurs­day's brazen mur­ders of school­boys De-neil­son Smith, 17, and Mark Richards, 16, on Pic­ton Road, Laven­tille, while on their way home from school.

An 81-year-old pen­sion­er, Mosley Phillip, who is said to be the fa­ther of one of the men al­leged­ly in­volved in the shoot­ing of the two sec­ondary school teens, was gunned down on Fri­day night in Laven­tille.

Po­lice said they be­lieved the killing was a reprisal for the mur­ders of the school­boys.

Around 2.10 pm yes­ter­day, sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers were sta­tioned close to So­gren Trace, Laven­tille, not too far from where Phillip was shot a few times in the chest. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Phillip's wife, Cyn­thia, was wash­ing dish­es on Fri­day night when the wa­ter sup­ply stopped sud­den­ly.

She woke him up to do a rou­tine check, but he was ap­proached by gun­men who shot him sev­er­al times about the body. The cou­ple's couch was al­so set on fire and po­lice dis­cov­ered the re­mains of two molo­tov cock­tails at the scene. Po­lice are work­ing on the the­o­ry that Phillip's killers at­tempt­ed to torch the house.

No one was at home yes­ter­day when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed. There were bro­ken pieces of glass from the three win­dow panes and bul­let holes in the front door.

A neigh­bour, how­ev­er, said Phillip and his wife were qui­et peo­ple who were nev­er in trou­ble with any­one. Res­i­dents claimed the son was part of a gang.

Young man gunned down in Clifton Hill

Low­er down at Clifton Hill, east Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day night, po­lice on pa­trol heard gun­shots and up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion found the bloody body of a young man. Po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion were un­able to iden­ti­fy the man up to late yes­ter­day.

Mor­vant PH dri­ver shot to death

Across at Poin­set­tia Ex­ten­sion, Mor­vant, 28-year-old PH dri­ver Richard So­leyn was shot to death around 6 am yes­ter­day while he hid un­der a heap of clothes. Rel­a­tives were com­fort­ing each oth­er me­tres from where he was shot.

Po­lice said So­leyn and his com­mon-law wife were at home sleep­ing when three gun­men en­tered the home by break­ing down a back door. The spouse, Na­tal­ie Phillip, and three chil­dren–ages five, three and one–were un­hurt.

So­leyn's moth­er, Eliz­a­beth Castil­lo, hold­ing on to her on­ly son's wal­let, said he was lov­ing and qui­et. She said his chil­dren adored him more than their moth­er. Ac­cord­ing to Castil­lo, her son worked hard to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly. The chil­dren saw their fa­ther's dead body, she said.

Castil­lo ques­tioned who would want to hurt So­leyn and why.

"I'd like to know what he did," she said.

Castil­lo said, "I was home and heard the shots. Nor­mal­ly when I hear shots around the neigh­bour­hood I would call him but when I called, I got no an­swer. The shots sound­ed so close."

Pe­nal ven­dor and Grande man mur­dered

The mur­der spree was not con­tained to the cap­i­tal city.

In south Trinidad, po­lice re­ports were that ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, 39-year-old pro­duce ven­dor Steve Stephen­son of Pe­nal Rock Road was sell­ing veg­eta­bles near his home when gun­men ap­proached and shot him sev­er­al times. Stephen­son was rushed to the Siparia Health Cen­tre but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mo­tive be­hind this mur­der.

GET IT RIGHT

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Long­denville/Tal­paro Coun­cil­lor Ryan Ram­per­sad was er­ro­neous­ly re­ferred to as a "PNM Coun­cil­lor" in a pho­to cap­tion pub­lished on page A5 of the Jan­u­ary 17 edi­tion. We re­gret the er­ror.