A J The­o­lade

A five-month-old ba­by girl sur­vived a close brush with death yes­ter­day, nar­row­ly es­cap­ing gun­fire from armed men en­gaged in what po­lice are call­ing a turf war in east Port of Spain.Her moth­er, 39-year-old Pa­t­ri­na Sa­landy was not so lucky. She died af­ter the gun­men shot her in the head, while she was still cradling ba­by Kay­la to pro­tect her.Res­i­dents lat­er re­port­ed find­ing the ba­by, who re­port­ed­ly sur­vived with on­ly mi­nor in­juries, in the road be­side her moth­er's body.

Sa­landy was walk­ing along St Paul Street with her ba­by and her three old­er sons Loren­zo, 13, Ra­heem, 11 and Jay­don, through the area in which res­i­dents had set up road blocks on Sat­ur­day to protest the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of 19-year-old Keshorn Daniel.

Res­i­dents of neigh­bour­ing Park­side Plaza, which over­looks the blood­stained pave­ment where Sa­landy was killed, re­fused to give their names in fear of reprisals, but said that around 11.45 am, a group of men with what they de­scribed as ma­chine guns ran down the hill and opened fire. Sa­landy tried to pro­tect her ba­by, who dropped to the ground af­ter she was killed.

See­ing the ba­by drop, res­i­dents rushed to save her, tak­ing her and her sib­lings to safe­ty in­side their own apart­ments. They re­port­ed re­mov­ing the ba­by's blood­stained clothes and giv­ing her a bath. The ba­by was very ag­i­tat­ed and her makeshift care­givers were wor­ried that she had been hurt in the fall. Moth­er and daugh­ter were tak­en in pri­vate ve­hi­cles to the hos­pi­tal.

"You know how long the la­dy lie down there," said one shak­en res­i­dent from a near­by apart­ment, "no am­bu­lance, no po­lice, no noth­ing."Ba­by Kay­la was still in the care of Park­side Plaza res­i­dents when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the scene. A shocked Kurt Fields, hus­band of Sa­landy and fa­ther of ba­by Kay­la, re­turned around 1.30 pm and gave the ba­by to rel­a­tives who rushed her to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al hos­pi­tal to be checked for in­juries. The Besson Street Po­lice said that they didn't have any in­for­ma­tion on the shoot­ings.

A 16-year-old boy iden­ti­fied on­ly as Re­shaun, was al­so fa­tal­ly shot in the in­ci­dent. Friends of the sec­ond vic­tim said this was the third time he had been shot.Sa­landy's killing was one of three mur­ders record­ed yes­ter­day, push­ing the mur­der toll for the year to 207.