In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk

Joshua Seemu­n­gal,

Shal­iza Has­sanali, Jensen La Vende

and Asha Javeed

For peo­ple liv­ing a cer­tain life of priv­i­lege or dis­con­nect from the re­al­i­ties of many com­mu­ni­ties in T&T, the ex­tent to which il­le­gal firearms have be­come in­ter­twined with our cul­ture is like­ly in­con­ceiv­able.

As ev­i­dence of this, Trini­bad an­thems at­tract­ing mil­lions of views on YouTube and play­ing dai­ly on ra­dio sta­tions, tell sto­ries of grue­some lo­cal gang ex­e­cu­tions.

Here are the lyrics to two of the most pop­u­lar songs on YouTube:

“Mount ah guns what we have like Afghanistan

Yeah you know we that bad

Wave ri­fle from me small like ah kids car­ni­val”

“Any­way mi go

Mi nev­er lef mine

Ah gun­shot boy yuh get

From the Tec- 9

Rise up the rep­tile

Yuh body nev­er get find

Yuh diss 12

1 o’clock is yah death time”

The songs are a raw, gen­uine re­flec­tion of a lifestyle lived by an in­creas­ing num­ber of youths.

Be­tween 2014 to Sep­tem­ber 2023, more than 4,719 peo­ple were mur­dered–at least 80 per cent by firearms. These guns are clos­er than ever to home.

Gun vi­o­lence is part of T&T’s cul­ture, and it is not go­ing away any­time soon.

In the open porch of his home, a soft-spo­ken 10 year-old Ja­van re­called see­ing a shoot­er while he and oth­ers were play­ing foot­ball, in prepa­ra­tion for an up­com­ing foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

“The gun­man and dem was not com­ing for we, they was com­ing for the man. We was play­ing foot­ball and then we see the gun­man and then we run. Every­body was in front of me, (in­clud­ing) a big man. And that’s all I re­mem­ber,” he told Guardian Me­dia last week.

On Au­gust 16, 2022, gun­men, aim­ing at their tar­get, a 38-year-old Mor­vant man, shot two chil­dren and mur­dered Eu­si­bio Roberts, a fa­ther of five.

One of the two chil­dren shot was Ja­van, then an eight-year-old stan­dard two stu­dent.

One of the killers, who be­gan shoot­ing at a bas­ket­ball court, chased Roberts shoot­ing at him. The man and the chil­dren ran through a hole in the fence of the bas­ket­ball court. The gun­man chased af­ter Roberts, hit­ting him and the two chil­dren.

Ja­van was shot once to the back of the head, the bul­let ex­it­ing the left tem­ple. He col­lapsed a few feet from the track lead­ing to his home.

Asked if he ever re­turned to the court where he and oth­ers had been play­ing since, Ja­van said no.

He’s afraid the killer will come back.

On Oc­to­ber 28, Ja­van, for the first time in over a year re­turned to the court with Guardian Me­dia, rid­ing his scoot­er and re­call­ing how he ran through a hole in the fence to es­cape the killer.

He re­mains an ac­tive 10-year-old, play­ing video games and foot­ball with friends at a new lo­ca­tion.

His moth­er, Mar­cia Burke said Ja­van was for­bid­den from play­ing sports since part of his skull had to be re­moved af­ter the shoot­ing.

“Yuh know boys,” she said, adding that she is ex­tra thank­ful that her child has not had any seizures since he was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

Ja­van was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022, three weeks af­ter the shoot­ing.

Burke said since then, her child has be­come more hy­per and eats more than he used to.

“Ja­van came from a long way be­cause the doc­tors said he would have been a veg­etable, but God didn’t say that,” Burke added

De­spite the med­ical ad­vice against him play­ing sports, the right-foot­ed strik­er, who de­scribed him­self as “ah bad” when it came to foot­ball, wants to be the lo­cal Cris­tiano Ronal­do.

Since re­turn­ing to school, Ja­van said on­ly one child at a school asked about him be­ing shot. He said he doesn’t like talk­ing about the in­ci­dent, ev­i­dent by his one-word an­swers to open end­ed ques­tions. Ja­van said he feels lucky be­cause he could have died.

“Je­sus help me to live” he said.

Ja­van wants to be­come a po­lice of­fi­cer, a pas­sion he had be­fore the shoot­ing and car­ries through more now. He told Guardian Me­dia he wants to be a po­lice so he could “stop the gun­men and dem”.

See­ing her son on the ground with a bul­let to the head had her con­vinced he was dead.

This was the sen­ti­ment of her broth­er, Mar­cus Ryan, who rushed his nephew to hos­pi­tal, sav­ing his life.

“He is not the first per­son I trans­port to the hos­pi­tal who get shoot. He was the first rel­a­tive,” Ryan re­called, adding Ja­van is the on­ly one who sur­vived.

Ryan said he drove like a mad­man to get his nephew to the hos­pi­tal, each time he saw or heard him gasp for air, he drove faster, pop­ping his horns and us­ing his haz­ard lights.

“I was dri­ving with one hand and any­time he gasp for breath that is the time I go re­al pan­ic and dash­ing through two cars be­cause you giv­ing peo­ple horn and they not think­ing like is a se­ri­ous scene. I had to make the moves I make. Lat­er in the night af­ter I drop him off, my niece called and say the doc­tors say the per­son who drop him, save he life.”

Ryan, an au­to painter, said he stepped out of his shop for a minute to “take a lil breeze” when the shoot­ing hap­pened, and he heard the gun­shots and saw chil­dren run­ning. Some of the chil­dren told him to get his car as Ja­van was shot.

“Un­cle Mar­cus go for yuh car,” he re­called the chil­dren telling him be­fore he saw his nephew. He got his blue Nis­san Almera, and with the help of two oth­ers placed his nephew in the back seat and “voosh” made his way to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

His mes­sage to gun­men was bib­li­cal: “The com­ing of the Lord is near and peo­ple have to find them-self and the truth. Peo­ple have to find ho­li­ness. When a man holy he will find him­self to do­ing the right thing and he go con­sid­er some­body life.”

Burke said with part of her son’s skull re­moved, she is thank­ful he has not had any seizures. Ja­van’s class­mates were sen­si­tised and have not made fun of him or asked him to re­live the in­ci­dent.

She too had a mes­sage to gun­men say­ing, “I sure they have fam­i­ly, I sure they have chil­dren and when they do peo­ple these things it does re­al hurt them (vic­tims). I find they should stop and change your life be­cause it ain’t mak­ing no sense. The same way what they do­ing peo­ple it will come back to them and they would not like it. They will be beg­ging for their life. It wasn’t fair at all for Ja­van and no oth­er chil­dren to be go­ing through what they went through?”

Last week Mon­day, 31-year-old Mar­lon Cust died at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex—two weeks af­ter his health took a turn for the worst.

Mar­lon, who died of sep­sis, will be laid to rest with a bul­let still in­side of him–near his heart.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, Mar­lon was shot eigh­teen times in his fam­i­ly’s Muller Trace, De­mer­ara Road, Waller­field home. That same night, his 16-year-old broth­er Jor­dan Archibald, 19-year-old broth­er Dim­itri Cust and 24-year-old cousin Ny­ron Samuel were all mur­dered while sleep­ing.

Mar­lon’s death means that his moth­er, Eleeza Cust, lost three sons and a nephew to gun vi­o­lence, and the group of men who did it were nev­er ar­rest­ed or charged.

“It re­al­ly hard on me. I still ex­pect them to be back home. He, Mar­lon, was suf­fer­ing a lot. He was in plen­ty of pain—day and night, he would call out for help. He was in one po­si­tion all day and night be­cause he got dam­aged and was paral­ysed. He could on­ly stay on one side. It caused bed sores. He went through a lot. No. We’ve nev­er heard any­thing from the po­lice since. Noth­ing about an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I tried to get wel­fare as­sis­tance for them. They had me up and down, back and forth, and now he’s passed away. We nev­er got it,” Cust, who lives in a two-bed­room, con­crete brick home said, try­ing her best not to be over­whelmed by tears.

On Jan­u­ary 16, 2020, Eleeza’s sons and nephew were shot by two men with high-pow­ered firearms dressed in full TTPS uni­forms. The men climbed through one of the house’s win­dows and opened fire on the men sleep­ing in the bed­rooms.

Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents, days be­fore the shoot­ing men dressed in de­fence force and TTPS uni­forms were in the area, but Eliza said that Ari­ma Po­lice lat­er told the fam­i­ly that there was no of­fi­cial pa­trol in the area around that time.

“The van of po­lice come and they start to shoot…They start to shake up the door and they say - this is po­lice…This is the po­lice…I get plen­ty of bul­lets and one of the bul­lets can’t come out…When I heard about my broth­ers, I just start­ed to cry,” Mar­lon said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia in March.

“They were in full uni­form and they had their guns across them and the guns strapped on­to their legs. They had one mask, their ski mask, black, over their face. They take the blocks that we had in the yard that we were build­ing, the foun­da­tion blocks and they put a height and they rack, rack the win­dow. My mum said she heard the win­dow but she didn’t re­al­ly take it on. But when she heard it rack­ing, rack­ing, rack­ing, she thought it was a ban­dit. And when they opened the win­dow and broke it open, they jumped through the win­dow and land­ed on her bed. They point­ed the gun at her, she said, and the oth­er per­son who was be­hind us, two of them, told her the first one, do not shoot the old la­dy. And then they start­ed to fire shots at my chil­dren who were sleep­ing,” Eleeza re­called.

Eleeza re­mains con­vinced that there’s a cov­er-up. She said she would fight to en­sure that jus­tice would be served be­fore she meets her three sons and nephew again in the af­ter­life.

The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

Ear­li­er this year, PCA Di­rec­tor David West con­firmed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is open.

Stray bul­let deaths

Da­ta com­piled by Guardian Me­dia showed in the last ten months of this year, five peo­ple lost their lives as a re­sult of stray bul­lets, while five chil­dren were al­so wound­ed.

The vic­tims were killed ei­ther in the com­fort of their homes, ca­su­al­ly strolling in a pub­lic space or sit­ting be­hind the wheel of a ve­hi­cle go­ing about their dai­ly busi­ness.

One of the vic­tims was even a home­less man in Tacarigua.

Most of the chil­dren picked up a stray bul­let while mer­ri­ly play­ing in their yards or watch­ing tele­vi­sion.

One killing that shocked the coun­try in April of this year was 35-year-old Ker­nel­la Saun­ders, an em­ploy­ee of Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege.

Saun­ders’ life was cut short when gun­men opened fire at a cou­ple on Daniel Trace, Mal­abar- a stone’s throw from where she lived.One of the bul­lets pierced Saun­ders’ bed­room win­dow, shat­tered the glass, ripped a met­al-cov­ered door and struck her neck.

An­oth­er in­no­cent life tak­en was 40-year-old Dhan­matie Har­ry. Har­ry, a moth­er of four, went to buy food on the West­ern Main Road in Diego Mar­tin last year when she picked up a stray bul­let in her stom­ach.

The youngest to be wound­ed was one-year-old Venezue­lan ba­by, Jose Nunez En­rique who was shot in both legs at his Lootoo Road, El So­cor­ro home by gun­men who kept fir­ing wild­ly at each oth­er in the dis­trict.

A 10-year-old boy from Ali Jhan Trace, Pi­ar­co Old Road, D’Aab­die al­so had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion af­ter sus­tain­ing a bul­let wound in his leg af­ter a hail of rapid gun­fire in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Com­par­ing 2023 to pre­vi­ous years, there has been a no­tice­able in­crease in peo­ple dy­ing or be­ing se­ri­ous­ly wound­ed by stray bul­lets as a re­sult of trig­ger-hap­py gun­men.

Peo­ple wound­ed by a stray bul­let:

One-year-old Jose Nunez En­rique of Lootoo Street, El So­cor­ro-Sep­tem­ber 2023.

A 15-year-old boy from South Oropouche-Au­gust 2023.

Is­rael Mon­roe, a Form Three stu­dent, and King Charles a Stan­dard Three pupil of San Fer­nan­do- Au­gust 2023

Kalum St Bernard, eight, of Va­len­cia- Au­gust 2023

A 10-year-old boy of Ali Jhan Trace Pi­ar­co, June 2022

Ram­par­ie Parb­hoo,65, of Di­a­mond Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do-Oc­to­ber 2020.

Jabari Hill, To­ba­go-De­cem­ber 2017.

Peo­ple killed by a stray bul­let:

Ricky–a home­less man, 42, on Au­gust 2023

Bil­ly Williams, San Fer­nan­do on Au­gust 2023

Ker­nel­la Saun­ders, 35, of Train­line Road, Mal­abar on April 2023

Jew­el Chaitran, Jules Trace, Fyz­abad in April 2023

Steve Vi­dal, Carlsen Field in May 2023

Dhan­matie Har­ry,40, of Diego Mar­tin in June 2022

Monique Grif­fith,21, of D’Abadie in Ju­ly 2019

Char­maine Grey, 58, Pleas­antville in Feb­ru­ary 2019

Ray­mond Milling­ton, Princes Town in Ju­ly 2019.

Stephen Gon­za­les, 27, Co­corite in Sep­tem­ber 2018

Samah De­venish, 15, in Sep­tem­ber 2016

Il­le­gal en­try in­to the coun­try

The im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal guns goes as far back as Ju­ly 27, 1990 when the then leader of the Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen Imam Yasin ABu Bakr tried to over­throw the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) Gov­ern­ment by storm­ing Par­lia­ment and hold­ing then Prime Min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son and sev­er­al Cab­i­net min­is­ters and MPs hostage.

Af­ter six days of siege, busi­ness­es were loot­ed and burnt and 24 peo­ple were killed.

Fol­low­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the in­sur­rec­tion and a de­tailed re­port on its find­ings in 2014, it was re­vealed that Bakr had ne­go­ti­at­ed with per­sons in Libya for mon­ey, weapons and am­mu­ni­tion.

The re­port al­so re­vealed that one of Bakr’s 114 in­sur­rec­tion­ists had al­so arranged with Louis Ha­neef in Flori­da to ac­quire weapons and have them im­port­ed to Trinidad. In the re­port was that Fer­oze Khan, a cus­toms of­fi­cer and mem­ber of the Ja­maat abused his of­fice and fa­cil­i­tat­ed the il­le­gal en­try of weapons that were hid­den in ply­wood.

The shot­guns, sin­gle shot­gun ri­fles and au­to­mat­ic weapons the ex­trem­ists used were stored in a ware­house in Trinci­ty.

The com­mis­sion al­so rec­om­mend­ed that a spe­cial in­de­pen­dent an­ti-cor­rup­tion unit be es­tab­lished with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to iden­ti­fy cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties and rogue el­e­ments with­in the de­part­ment.

More than three decades lat­er, it was re­vealed be­fore a De­cem­ber 2022 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) that no scan­ners were op­er­a­tional at the Port of Port-of-Spain and that three of­fi­cers were tasked to man­u­al­ly in­spect thou­sands of freight con­tain­ers that en­ter this coun­try.

Of the 23,000 con­tain­ers that came in­to the coun­try bear­ing mer­chan­dise last year, 19,000 had breezed through cus­toms and law en­force­ment with­out checks for weapons and oth­er il­le­gal items be­cause of the non-func­tion­ing scan­ners.

The news came at a time when T&T had record­ed its high­est mur­der rate of 605- the ma­jor­i­ty com­mit­ted with il­le­gal re­volvers, pis­tols, high-pow­ered firearms and man­u­fac­tured shot­guns.

Hinds: State agen­cies com­plic­it

Speak­ing with the me­dia last year, Hinds said State agen­cies had in­di­vid­u­als who are com­plic­it in the crime prob­lem.

“Ei­ther neg­li­gent in their du­ty or com­plic­it, cor­rup­tion is a ma­jor prob­lem in this coun­try and it is im­pact­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion in a very di­rect way,” he said, adding that the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy placed bor­der se­cu­ri­ty at the high­est pri­or­i­ty.

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Gary Grif­fith said ad­dress­ing the im­por­ta­tion of guns was a sim­ple one, fix­ing Cus­toms and Ex­cise (C&E).

Last month, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that staff short­ages at C&E were af­fect­ing their abil­i­ty to de­tect il­le­gal weapons and drugs en­ter­ing. Apart from be­ing un­der­staffed, sources al­so com­plained that low salaries make some staff more sus­cep­ti­ble to ac­cept­ing bribes to look the oth­er way when guns are im­port­ed.

Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia that while he was po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­tween 2018 to 2021, he worked close­ly with the US em­bassy who shared that most of the il­le­gal firearms en­tered the coun­try through le­gal ports and not il­le­gal ports.

“The le­git­i­mate ports of en­try should be the fo­cus. That is why I was very dis­ap­point­ed that the use of the mo­bile scan­ners that I ac­quired was not be­ing used at the port and the re­luc­tance to uti­tlise the draft bor­der pro­tec­tion pol­i­cy,” he said.

Grif­fith added that this pol­i­cy, which was not made pub­lic and giv­en to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, saw the for­ma­tion of a bor­der pro­tec­tion unit, com­pris­ing of po­lice, Cus­toms and Ex­cise, De­fence Force, Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty, all of whom were to be prop­er­ly vet­ted to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty, and to avoid cor­rup­tion.

He said while po­lice have far-reach­ing pow­ers, it stops short at every port with Cus­toms and Ex­cise hav­ing full ju­ris­dic­tion and the unit will be able to cir­cum­vent that by in­clud­ing Cus­toms Of­fi­cers who can en­ter ports and car­ry out search­es with the back­ing of the mul­ti-agency team.

In an ef­fort to ad­dress the is­sue of guns be­ing cleared to en­ter the coun­try through com­plic­it Cus­toms and Ex­cise work­ers, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who has min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight of the unit, saids new scan­ner will be pro­vid­ed.

In his 2023-2024 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Oc­to­ber 2, Im­bert said a $90 mil­lion con­tract was award­ed for four large-scale scan­ners to be in­stalled at the Port of Port-of-Spain and Port of Point Lisas ports. Work­ers will al­so re­ceive 16 hand-held scan­ners.

The war against il­le­gal firearms

In an un­prece­dent­ed move in April, lead­ers of Cari­com made a de­c­la­ra­tion against the trade of il­le­gal guns at the end of a two-day crime sym­po­sium host­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Trinidad.

A month be­fore on March 9, Row­ley said T&T was con­sid­er­ing join­ing Mex­i­co in su­ing the US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers for firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences in their coun­tries.

The law­suit, which is pend­ing, at the time cit­ed the Ba­hamas, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and T&T as not be­ing part of Mex­i­co’s US$10 bil­lion law­suit against sev­en US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers and one whole­saler and dis­trib­u­tor.

At the sym­po­sium, lead­ers called for the US to join the Caribbean in the war on guns and to ur­gent­ly adopt and take ac­tion to stop the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in­to the re­gion.

For the thou­sands of wound­ed, vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors alike in T&T, the PM said a sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tion to the head can cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $170,000.

In­ter­ven­tion for the chest came with a price tag of $135,000 while a leg re­quir­ing sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tion was about $ 100,000.

A leg shot with­out sur­gi­cal at­ten­tion can cost $40,000 which the tax­pay­er would have to pay.

A week af­ter the ant-crime sym­po­sium and at the close of a three-day sem­i­nar on guns in the re­gion host­ed by the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty In­sti­tute (CB­SI) and Im­pacs, US Am­bas­sador to TT Can­dace Bond said the US, through CB­SI, said the US spent close to a bil­lion dol­lars tack­ing gun crimes in the re­gions.

She said through CB­SI, the US in­vest­ed over US$832 mil­lion (be­tween 2010 and 2023) to re­duce il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing, in­crease pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, and pro­mote so­cial jus­tice.

Apart from fi­nan­cial sup­port, Bond said the US en­act­ed laws to curb the flow of guns leav­ing the US and en­ter­ing the re­gion.

Speak­ing at the 45th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Trinidad in Ju­ly, US Sec­re­tary of State An­tho­ny Blinken un­der­scored the US’ com­mit­ment to com­bat­ing firearms traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean by ap­point­ing De­part­ment of Jus­tice Pros­e­cu­tor Michael Ben’ Ary as the coun­try’s first-ever co­or­di­na­tor for Caribbean Firearm Pros­e­cu­tions.

Last month, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher praised her of­fi­cers, seek­ing to warn crim­i­nals that po­lice were not re­lent­ing in rid­ding the coun­try of il­le­gal guns.

She said: “We ex­pect that this seizure will again sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the in­ci­dence of vi­o­lent crimes com­mit­ted with the use of firearms, es­pe­cial­ly homi­cides and home in­va­sions. I would like to thank and com­mend the of­fi­cers in­volved in this seizure, you have placed your­selves in harm’s way and put your lives at risk with the aim of keep­ing our na­tion safe. I al­so thank the pub­lic and es­pe­cial­ly those who see some­thing and say some­thing. We will main­tain our in­ten­si­ty in the seizure of il­le­gal firearms, and we will re­lent­less­ly pur­sue those bent on be­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

In her two-year an­ti-crime plan, the top cop said vi­o­lent crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly gun-re­lat­ed homi­cides, were in­creas­ing at an alarm­ing rate, fu­elling fear in the coun­try.

“The prob­lem is built around gangs, guns and drugs. There must be a turn­around in 2023 to show a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in vi­o­lence and im­prove­ments in safe­ty” she re­port­ed.

She said po­lice have iden­ti­fied 156 il­le­gal ports in Trinidad and 27 in To­ba­go with three le­gal ports in To­ba­go and 38 in Trinidad.