Jensen La Vende

The brazen­ness of the coun­try's killers went to the ex­treme in two sep­a­rate mur­ders that took the toll to 450 for the year be­tween Thurs­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The mur­ders took place in Mor­vant and Port-of-Spain and both with com­plete dis­re­gard to the fact po­lice were near­by.

In the most re­cent case, Sean Thomas, 33, of Fran­cis Road, San Juan, was shot dead along Queen Street, Port-of-Spain as two po­lice jeeps were on pa­trol.

Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es re­ports, a gun­man opened fire on the sil­ver Toy­ota car Thomas was dri­ving along Queen Street, be­tween Nel­son and George Streets, around 10 am. Wit­ness­es said the gun­man was un­masked and a marked po­lice jeep was about five car lengths away in the front, with a po­lice jeep two car lengths be­hind Thomas' car. An off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer work­ing in a near­by jew­el­ry shop heard the gun­shots and opened fire on the killer, but on­ly hit an­oth­er car in the process.

De­spite be­ing vir­tu­al­ly sur­round­ed and en­gaged by po­lice sec­onds af­ter the at­tack, the killer es­caped by run­ning through the near­by plan­nings. Up to yes­ter­day no ar­rests had been made. But po­lice said the in­ci­dent was record­ed on close cir­cuit cam­eras and they ex­pect to make an ar­rest soon.

Po­lice said they be­lieved Thomas was killed fol­low­ing a rob­bery, but they are al­so work­ing on the the­o­ry it could be linked to a gun at­tack last year which he sur­vived.

Shop­pers stopped and gawked as rel­a­tives of the de­ceased ar­rived at the scene, hav­ing been alert­ed of the mur­der via pho­tos on so­cial me­dia. His rel­a­tives were too dis­traught to speak at the scene.

As the rel­a­tives await­ed the re­moval of his body, those gath­ered were over­heard lament­ing at the "dark days" of the coun­try. One woman who sells along Queen Street, near to where the killing took place, said she had sons and warned them about wear­ing jew­el­ry in Port-of-Spain, since it is be­lieved he may have been killed for his gold chain. Oth­er peo­ple chas­tised the po­lice for fail­ing to ap­pre­hend the killer while oth­ers said Thomas should not have fought with the ban­dit.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent on Thurs­day night, four gun­men shot and killed a US de­por­tee along Flamin­go Street, Mor­vant, just be­hind the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion. Po­lice said the de­ceased, Akeem Jor­dan, 37, was known to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the killers pulled up in a Nis­san Almera and opened fire on Jor­dan and sped off. Of­fi­cers ran to the scene but by the time they ar­rived the killers had al­ready es­caped. Po­lice said Jor­dan told them he knew his at­tack­ers but died be­fore he could give a name. He was shot nine times, his au­top­sy re­vealed.