RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of mur­dered teenag­er Chris­t­ian Lash­ley be­lieve jeal­ousy may have been the mo­tive for his killing.

Lash­ley, 15, was stabbed dur­ing a “play fight” with an­oth­er teenag­er at 4.45 pm in the pavil­ion area at the Chrissie Ter­race Recre­ation Ground on Sun­day.

Po­lice said Lash­ley and the sus­pect were play-fight­ing when he was stabbed in the right side of his tor­so. The vic­tim held on­to his side and asked to be tak­en home as the sus­pect, who was seen hold­ing a pock­et knife, fled.

Lash­ley was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, sta­bilised and trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice said at about 9.30 pm that same day, the sus­pect, a 15-year-old boy from Ca­roni, in the com­pa­ny of a close male rel­a­tive, walked in­to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion, where he con­fessed to stab­bing Lash­ley. The sus­pect was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the Oropouche Ju­ve­nile Book­ing Cen­tre pend­ing fur­ther in­quiries.

Lash­ley was a Form Two pupil of the Ch­agua­nas South Sec­ondary School.

A rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia that Lash­ley, of Con­nec­tion Dri­ve, En­ter­prise, had gone to a bar­ber in the Chrissie Ter­race area and then to the recre­ation ground.

His moth­er, Nicole Lash­ley, was too dis­traught to speak yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, a rel­a­tive said Lash­ley may have been a vic­tim of jeal­ousy and was re­cent­ly threat­ened by an­oth­er youth. He re­port­ed­ly made a re­port to the po­lice on the mat­ter.

En­ter­prise South/Long­denville North coun­cil­lor Bren­da John yes­ter­day ques­tioned what is hap­pen­ing in so­ci­ety.

“What is hap­pen­ing with all youths and Cen­tral, what is the hate and anger that is built up now? We need to be on the ground, we need to be on the ground with these peo­ple and not in high places. They say was his at­ti­tude in school, they said they don’t like him and this is one of the rea­sons. Imag­ine that some­body don’t like you, they want to kill you.”

John called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to “please wake up from your slum­ber and see what is hap­pen­ing in cen­tral.”

“We need more po­lice posts in Cen­tral. We need more ve­hi­cles,” she said.

John said she has known the fam­i­ly for over a decade and called on the po­lice to “leave no stone un­turned and bring the per­pe­tra­tor to jus­tice.”

Cpl Ra­moutar is in­ves­ti­gat­ing.