PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Laven­tille yes­ter­day staged a peace­ful protest against gang vi­o­lence near to the spot where 12-year-old school­boy Ezekiel Paria was fa­tal­ly shot.

The Stan­dard Five pupil of East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was hit by a stray bul­let as he stood on the side­walk on Laven­tille Road on Thurs­day af­ter gun­men opened fire on a car dri­ving through the area. The gun­men were re­port­ed­ly tar­get­ing a man seat­ed in the ve­hi­cle.

Paria was a top-per­form­ing stu­dent who was prepar­ing to sit the 2024 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on March 21.

He was killed just two days af­ter pupils of the Gloster Lodge Mora­vian School in Bel­mont were left trau­ma­tised by an­oth­er fa­tal shoot­ing. Amoa Howe, 50, a fa­ther of five, was shot mul­ti­ple times me­tres from the school’s front gate in plain view of staff and pupils on Tues­day.

The two in­ci­dents have sparked out­rage and con­cern with calls mount­ing from var­i­ous quar­ters for more po­lice pa­trols and tighter se­cu­ri­ty around schools.

“We are cry­ing out, we are tired, we are fed up, we are trau­ma­tized for no ap­par­ent rea­son, all be­cause of a few self­ish peo­ple,” said Ali­cia Gift, Coun­cil­lor for St Ann’s Riv­er North, who joined the res­i­dents and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Kezel Jack­son in the protest.

Gift said the res­i­dents were ea­ger to speak out against the spate of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and vi­o­lence in the area which end­ed a promis­ing young life.

“Hope­ful­ly the mes­sage would reach out to those who just are hell-bent on get­ting in­volved in crime and hav­ing in­no­cent chil­dren as well as oth­er in­no­cent peo­ple los­ing their lives un­nec­es­sar­i­ly in what is we can on­ly de­scribe as an un­nec­es­sary self­ish acts,” she said.

Jack­son, who led the protest, said she was there “first of all as a moth­er.”

“To­day is some­body else’s child. To­mor­row it may be yours be­cause right now Trinidad and To­ba­go is in a sad state. As I tell the peo­ple crime now has be­come a pub­lic health cri­sis. We need to take col­lec­tive ac­tion as well as col­lec­tive in­ten­tion and at­ten­tion to­wards crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty,” she said.

Jack­son said the time had come for the pub­lic to make a greater push for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to ad­dress the in­equal­i­ty and so­cial jus­tice is­sues which con­tribute to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty should be every­body’s busi­ness right now. It is a front burn­er is­sue. There are many steps many steps first of all I men­tioned to­day that is time for us to have ju­di­cial re­form. The le­gal frame­work needs to change our con­sti­tu­tion needs to change be­cause we have sev­er­al per­sons crim­i­nals are not born crim­i­nals are made,” she said.

Jack­son, who lament­ed the nu­mer­ous de­lays and back­logs in the jus­tice sys­tem, added: “We need al­so re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, not on­ly in the prison sys­tem, but re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion in these com­mu­ni­ties.

“Come down and be­gin to speak. We have too much ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy, too much idle­ness with­in these com­mu­ni­ties. Chil­dren hav­ing noth­ing to do. Why? Be­cause the school dropout rate is high be­cause of what the so­cio-eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment the so­cio-fi­nances of the fam­i­ly.”

Not­ing that ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on sin­gle moth­er of­ten lead sto young chil­dren be­ing un­der­su­per­vised and at risk of be­ing swayed in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty, Jack­son said: “Too many sin­gle par­ent moth­ers rais­ing chil­dren and they have to go and hus­tle. Hus­tle from job to job to be able to put bread on the ta­ble. It is a vi­cious cy­cle and the cy­cle of pover­ty is al­so af­fect­ing the cy­cle of crime.”

The res­i­dents are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue their protest to­day.