by Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

As To­ba­go braces for the im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Beryl, the is­land reg­is­tered an­oth­er mur­der as a gun­man shot and killed a man in Mt Pleas­ant.

This mur­der has pushed the is­land’s toll to 11 for 2024, a 50 per cent in­crease when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od (Jan­u­ary-June) in 2023.

Full de­tails were not yet avail­able at the time of this post but Guardian Me­dia con­firmed the man was lim­ing out­side when he was shot.

He was tak­en to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

Po­lice didn’t want to re­lease his name as fam­i­ly rel­a­tives had not yet been in­formed.

The de­ceased is 30 and of African de­scent.

Act­ing Snr Supt Dirk John told Guardian Me­dia he was ap­palled by this and the fact that po­lice are re­port­ing that they had to ask peo­ple to go to safe­ty.

He asked the pub­lic to, “Re­main in­side un­til this thing pass­es by. Pa­trols are out, and if we do see peo­ple, they will stop and search them. If they have il­le­gal items, we will not hold back to make the ar­rest.”

“We had to urge per­sons to get in­side. We have peo­ple sit­ting on the cul­vert. Peo­ple were still out­side re­lax­ing them­selves, and I found it to be very weird know­ing that this sit­u­a­tion is hap­pen­ing.

He urged peo­ple to stay in­side and had this mes­sage for crim­i­nals who chose to take ad­van­tage of the is­land’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty at this time.

“You are jeop­ar­dis­ing your own lives by be­ing out there. If some­one has ill in­tent, they are jeop­ar­dis­ing their own lives.”