Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

What should have been a quick and un­event­ful trip to a par­lour on Tues­day night end­ed in death for a school­boy and a Bon Air teenag­er, who were gunned down by ri­fle-wield­ing killers.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the Arou­ca CID were on pa­trol in Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, at 10 pm when they heard gun­shots com­ing from the di­rec­tion of Emer­ald Cir­cu­lar and Sky­lark Cres­cent.

The of­fi­cers went to the scene, where they found the life­less body of An­im Per­sad, 15, and Ol­un James, 18, bleed­ing near­by. The of­fi­cers rushed James to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal where he was de­clared dead.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer vis­it­ed the area and de­clared Per­sad dead.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so vis­it­ed the scene and found 25 spent 7.76 shells and 32 spent 5.56 shells.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood and spoke with Per­sad’s un­cle Joel An­dall, who lament­ed the un­pre­dictable na­ture of mur­ders.

An­dall said he re­mem­bered Per­sad play­ing video games with his younger broth­er in the liv­ing room of the fam­i­ly’s Emer­ald Cir­cu­lar home be­fore they had a slight dis­agree­ment. He said Per­sad left the home with­out telling any­one he was go­ing to a near­by par­lour to get snacks.

An­dall said while he did not know Per­sad to be in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers re­peat­ed­ly warned Per­sad against ven­tur­ing to cer­tain parts of the neigh­bour­hood, as the threat of gang vi­o­lence was preva­lent.

“He was duck­ing out to go in the shop but it’s 10 pm at night, so ob­vi­ous­ly he’s not try­ing to tell any­body,” An­dall said.

“He won’t go to the shop­keep­er his moth­er knows be­cause she will call his moth­er, so he didn’t go to her. He went to an­oth­er shop­keep­er who is near­by, but I told him don’t go to that shop.

“That par­tic­u­lar shop­keep­er used to be on shenani­gans a while ago and those things fol­low you. Peo­ple don’t just come and spray up spe­cif­ic cor­ners.”

An­dall said Per­sad’s 14-year-old broth­er was sup­posed to go to the shop with him but even­tu­al­ly did not.

He in­sist­ed his nephew was not the in­tend­ed tar­get of the killers and lament­ed the spate of vi­o­lence in the coun­try.

He said fam­i­ly mem­bers warned Per­sad about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing struck by stray bul­lets in the past but this was to no avail.

“We used to do our best to keep him out of all kinds of trou­ble,” An­dall said.

“He found a cell­phone the oth­er day. When we found out who phone it be­longed to, we made him take it back to the per­son. We used to talk to him but he was a teenag­er. He thought he was in­vin­ci­ble.”

An­dall said Per­sad’s younger broth­er heard the gun­shots and ran out to find his broth­er’s body on the street. He then ran back to the home and told the fam­i­ly what hap­pened.

The rel­a­tive said Per­sad at­tend­ed the Diego Mar­tin Sec­ondary School, as he had spent some time liv­ing with rel­a­tives in Diego Mar­tin but re­cent­ly moved to Bon Air due to dif­fi­cul­ties in the fam­i­ly.

An­dall said his nephew had dreams of do­ing farm­ing af­ter spend­ing time at a plot of the fam­i­ly’s land in Diego Mar­tin and al­so spent some time hunt­ing in the North­ern Range.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Ol­un James spoke about the hard­ships he en­coun­tered grow­ing up and his pas­sion for singing.

James, who is seen in his Mi­LAT uni­form, ad­dressed the dif­fi­cul­ty of deal­ing with the death of his moth­er from pul­monary fi­bro­sis. Amidst these chal­lenges, James said he had to over­come these ob­sta­cles but not­ed his de­sire to ul­ti­mate­ly lead a “health­i­er more pro­duc­tive lifestyle”.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the par­lour where Per­sad and James were killed and spoke with the pro­pri­etor, who said he was al­so shak­en af­ter the mur­ders.

The glass win­dows at the shop were shat­tered and bul­let holes could be seen on the walls in the wake of the dead­ly at­tack.

The pro­pri­etor, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the com­mu­ni­ty was deeply sad­dened and agreed that Per­sad and James were not the in­tend­ed tar­gets of the killers. He, how­ev­er, dis­agreed with some so­cial me­dia users that he was the ac­tu­al tar­get, not­ing that he was not even present at the shop at the time of the shoot­ing.

“Peo­ple say­ing that it’s me, they are try­ing to kill off my char­ac­ter. I went out and left some­one to run the shop as I was out,” he said.

One res­i­dent said peo­ple usu­al­ly gath­ered at the shop on evenings and be­lieved the gun­men sim­ply want­ed to “shoot some­one” when they saw a group of peo­ple gath­ered.

The shop­keep­er and oth­er res­i­dents said res­i­dents were un­easy af­ter the killings and called for an end to the vi­o­lence.

While Guardian Me­dia was still in the neigh­bour­hood, of­fi­cers from the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion pulled over a car that was seen speed­ing through streets and searched it.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion head, Snr Supt Richard Smith, said the dou­ble mur­der was con­cern­ing but vowed to re­dou­ble ef­forts to in­crease the safe­ty of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in the di­vi­sion.

“We are, in fact, tak­ing these crimes very se­ri­ous­ly. We are work­ing to­geth­er with the Homi­cide Unit and the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Gang Unit an to bring these per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice,” Smith said.

“We have some short-term plans to in­crease vis­i­bil­i­ty, as well as op­er­a­tions to be done in the af­fect­ed ar­eas. The res­i­dents of Bon Air, you can ex­pect to see ad­di­tion­al po­lice pres­ence.”

Some res­i­dents said they sus­pect­ed the killings may have been mo­ti­vat­ed by gang war­fare that be­gan in the Port-of-Spain dis­trict but ex­tend­ed to ri­val fac­tions that op­er­ate in the east­ern part of the is­land.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau if In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.

Per­sad and James’ mur­ders brought the mur­der toll to 505 for the year thus far com­pared to 536 for the same pe­ri­od last year.