Rhon­dor Dowlat

Mal­oney Gar­dens res­i­dents are now call­ing on Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and his "Op­er­a­tion Strike Back" team to move in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and take it back from the hands of crim­i­nals fol­low­ing a se­ries of mur­ders.

The call came af­ter a "stal­wart" of the com­mu­ni­ty was gunned down in cold blood while on his way home on Tues­day night.

He was iden­ti­fied as Je­re­mi­ah Franklin, a school teacher who lived at Build­ing 15.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at about 11.25 pm Franklin, who had just tend­ed to his gar­den and had stopped at a near­by par­lour, was on his way home when he was fa­tal­ly shot sev­er­al times.

A mo­tive is yet to be de­ter­mined but in­ves­ti­gat­ing po­lice be­lieve he was killed as peo­ple in the area thought he may have wit­nessed Mon­day's dou­ble mur­der. In that in­ci­dent, Az­izi Mc Ken­na, of Build­ing 13 and Ra­mon Cyril­lo were am­bushed by gun­men and shot sev­er­al times in the car park of Build­ing 2.

A team of of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau and the North­ern Di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing In­sp An­drew Lawrence, In­sp Gyan, Sgt Kat­wa­roo, Cpl Ali, PC Lawrence, and PC Han­nays, among sev­er­al oth­ers, vis­it­ed the scene last night.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

Read more in to­mor­row's T&T Guardian.