?Irate and anguished relatives of 18-year-old Armin Best are blaming the management of Trincity Mall, charging that the lack of security led to the teenager's stabbing death on Saturday night. According to Best's father, Mervyn Roach, the teenager was expected to graduate from the Government's Must programme on Wednesday, and was to begin working at WASA. As tears streamed down his face, the 49-year-old man demanded that his son's killers be brought to justice. "Armin was my eyeball...They come and stab him just so. He went to the mall with his friends and look what happen," Roach said in an interview at his home at Alexander Street in Tacarigua.
Police said Best was innocently caught in the middle of a fight which erupted between two groups of youths at one of the food courts at the mall around 8.15 pm. The teenager, who was stabbed several times, including in the neck, was rushed to Arima Health Centre, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. Best's 18-year-old friend, Brendon George, who was also stabbed, was, up to late yesterday, listed in critical condition at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope. "Armin get stab right next to Galactica. He run down the escalator to try to escape the killer, and he collapse in the car park just in front KFC," said Best's cousin, Terrence Delpeche.
If there was adequate security, Delpeche added, then the teenager's life would have been spared. "Blood was spraying all over the place and the security was no where. In fact, the security an' all run. There should be more police and even soldiers in the mall, because the security the mall have there cannot do anything. Is a real mad scene," Delpeche said. "People were scampering all over the place. Everybody was panicking because at that time people there with their families, including children."
