Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Ari­ma com­mu­ni­ty at Bel­lamy is in shock fol­low­ing the death of 10-year-old Chris­t­ian Liv­er­pool on Thurs­day night.

“The fam­i­ly in a re­al mess with this thing,” one res­i­dent, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day.

He point­ed to a near­by field and said it was one of Liv­er­pool’s favourite places to be.

An­oth­er res­i­dent lament­ed that Liv­er­pool’s death is the most re­cent in a string of loss­es for the com­mu­ni­ty, which she de­scribed as “close-knit.”

“Is three peo­ple that died in this area- one af­ter the oth­er,” she said.

The res­i­dent said the oth­er deaths were from nat­ur­al caus­es.

She said she did not hear the shot but ex­pressed that it was a trag­ic sit­u­a­tion.

None of the res­i­dents knew ex­act­ly what tran­spired and up to press time yes­ter­day, the po­lice were still build­ing the pic­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, a loud ex­plo­sion was heard on Thurs­day around 8 pm and rel­a­tives found Liv­er­pool nurs­ing a gun­shot wound at his home along Bernard Street.

The rel­a­tives rushed him to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he suc­cumbed to the in­juries.

Of­fi­cers seized a black Smith and Wes­son 9mm pis­tol with the se­r­i­al num­ber filed off.

They al­so re­trieved eight 9mm bul­lets along with one spent cas­ing.

The po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine whether Liv­er­pool’s death was a re­sult of him play­ing with the weapon or if some­one shot him. Re­ports in­di­cate that a 38-year-old rel­a­tive was de­tained in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent and is as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Liv­er­pool was a stu­dent at the Ari­ma New Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

Of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) and In­spec­tor Pitt re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent on Thurs­day night.