Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A shoot­ing in the heart of San Juan on Tues­day morn­ing claimed the lives of two peo­ple and left three oth­ers wound­ed.

Po­lice said Reynold An­der­son Vic­tor, 42, an em­ploy­ee of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, end­ed work and was lim­ing at the cor­ner of Sec­ond Street and Sad­dle Road around 8.55 am when oc­cu­pants of a Toy­ota Yaris drove up next to him. Four gun­men got out of the car and shot him sev­er­al times.

Four peo­ple who were stand­ing near Vic­tor at the time were al­so shot—among them Jelis­sa Payne, 35, who was tak­en to hos­pi­tal where she was de­clared dead.

Al­so wound­ed in the at­tack were a 40-year-old man who was shot in his but­tocks and right knee; a 59-year-old man who al­so re­ceived bul­let wounds to his but­tocks and right knee, and a woman who was shot in her back and left knee.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd vis­it­ed the scene as of­fi­cers of the San Juan CID and the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force cor­doned off the scene of Vic­tor’s mur­der from East­ern Main Road to Sec­ond Street, rerout­ing traf­fic and pedes­tri­ans to side streets.

A rel­a­tive said she was sad­dened by his mur­der, not­ing that it hap­pened with­out warn­ing.

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said Vic­tor was ex­pect­ed to cel­e­brate his wed­ding an­niver­sary next month. She said she was pained by his death.

“This whole thing is re­al­ly painful for all of us. He has a five-year-old son who he loves a lot. What is his son sup­posed to think about see­ing his fa­ther like this on the street?” she said.

Sev­er­al busi­ness­es near the scene of the mur­der closed their doors tem­porar­i­ly.

One busi­ness own­er said while Vic­tor’s mur­der was un­for­tu­nate, he felt that he was grad­u­al­ly be­ing de­sen­si­tised to vi­o­lent crime, be­cause of the fre­quen­cy with which it hap­pened.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein called for a greater po­lice pres­ence in the Croisee to curb crime, not­ing that sev­er­al res­i­dents have reached out to him to ex­press their con­cern over safe­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“It has be­come alarm­ing and fright­en­ing but it has now be­come the norm in Trinidad and To­ba­go, where we have seen peo­ple be­ing gunned down in broad day­light in very busy ar­eas.

“This has left many of my con­stituents in a state of shock that an in­di­vid­ual can be gunned down in this man­ner on a very busy street.”

Re­fer­ring to the mur­der of 38-year-old store clerk Ke­ston Alves out­side his Aranguez work­place on Mon­day, Ho­sein said an en­hanced po­lice pres­ence was nec­es­sary.

Po­lice in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion ad­mit­ted there was a no­tice­able uptick in the num­ber of vi­o­lent crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders for the year thus far.

One of­fi­cer said for the year there were 48 mur­ders in the di­vi­sion com­pared to 36 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

He said sev­er­al ini­tia­tives were in­tro­duced to sup­press crime.

Re­spond­ing to yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent, he said of­fi­cers of the San Juan Sub Sta­tion got to the scene with­in five min­utes, while oth­er units pa­trolled sev­er­al near­by ar­eas, in­clud­ing the San Juan mar­ket.

“We have sev­er­al strate­gies that are im­ple­ment­ed, in­clud­ing ac­tive di­rect­ed pa­trols to zone in on ar­eas of con­cern and bet­ter se­cure the area. We have had some chal­lenges but we are work­ing hard and we are do­ing our best to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty in all parts of the di­vi­sion.”

Re­fer­ring to the seizure of an as­sault ri­fle in Sev­enth Av­enue, Mal­ick, on Mon­day af­ter­noon, the of­fi­cer said the work of po­lice was yield­ing some re­sults.

He al­so called on the pub­lic to do their part in help­ing the po­lice.

Five mur­ders have tak­en place in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion for the week thus far, be­gin­ning with the killing of 24-year-old Kelum Williams in Up­per Sixth Av­enue, Mal­ick, on Sun­day af­ter­noon.

On Mon­day af­ter­noon, Alves was gunned down at his work­place on Aranguez Main Road.