Rhon­dor Dowlat

Four days af­ter he re­leased his lat­est pos­i­tive Vy­bz song for T&T, What We Need, Kelon “Don Kelon” Cruick­shank, 31, died along with his friend, Chris Rag­bir af­ter an al­ter­ca­tion at the NP Mon­trose Ser­vice Sta­tion in Ch­agua­nas on Sun­day night, in which both of them were stabbed sev­er­al times in the head and neck.

Cruick­shank was the broth­er of the late so­ca artiste Troy­don “Blaz­er Dan” Cruick­shank, who was al­so killed at the age of 31, some eight years ago on Oc­to­ber 22, 2010. Blaz­er Dan was lim­ing in the yard at his home in En­ter­prise with friends when three gun­men ran out from a near­by track and opened fire, shoot­ing him in the face.

Just like Blaz­er Dan’s mur­der, rel­a­tives yes­ter­day lament­ed that “an­oth­er good soul was sud­den­ly tak­en away from them”, and they are de­mand­ing jus­tice.

In the midst of their calls for jus­tice, in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed the gas sta­tion fore­court at­ten­dant, a 27-year-old Ja­maican na­tion­al, in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 8.30 pm on Sun­day, Rag­bir and Cruick­shank were at the ser­vice sta­tion when an ar­gu­ment broke out with the at­ten­dant.

Po­lice said both men walked away and got in­to their car when the sus­pect jumped in the back seat of the ve­hi­cle and be­gan stab­bing both men in the neck and up­per chest.

Cruick­shank, po­lice said, at­tempt­ed to dri­ve away along the Old South­ern Main Road but crashed the car.

Po­lice of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed found both men cov­ered in blood in the ve­hi­cle. They were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty where Rag­bir was pro­nounced dead. Cruick­shank was trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where he died while un­der­go­ing med­ical treat­ment.

Au­top­sy re­sults showed that both men died from mas­sive haem­or­rhag­ing and shock con­sis­tent with stab­bing to the neck and chest. The au­top­sy was done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, a rel­a­tive of Cruick­shank, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, called on the po­lice and im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers to “se­ri­ous­ly” crack down on il­le­gal im­mi­grants.

The mur­der toll now stands at 447 for the year so far.