Derek Achong

Po­lice were kept busy yes­ter­day af­ter a resur­gence of gang vi­o­lence in east Port-of-Spain which claimed five lives, among them three teenagers.Yes­ter­day's string of mur­ders, plus an­oth­er in Mal­oney Gar­dens, D'Abadie, on Tues­day night, raised the mur­der toll for the year to 240.The five vic­tims were iden­ti­fied as:

�2 Aaron Williams, 23, of Build­ing 9, Mal­oney Gar­dens, Arou­ca;

�2 Ni­am An­toine, 16, of Pic­cadil­ly Street, Port-of-Spain;

�2 An­toine's 16-year-old cousin Rashee­da Gomez, al­so of Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain;

�2 Sean Lewis Jr, 17, of Trou Macaque Road, Laven­tille; and

�2 Christo­pher Pe­ters, 27, of Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain.

An­oth­er man, who was uniden­ti­fied, died last night hav­ing been shot at 6.30 am yes­ter­day at Blondell Al­ley, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain.Homi­cide de­tec­tives could not con­firm whether all four in­ci­dents in east Port-of-Spain and Laven­tille were linked, but said the cousins' mur­ders were more than like­ly con­nect­ed.

In the wake of the mur­der spree, scores of heav­i­ly-armed sol­diers and po­lice of­fi­cers were seen pa­trolling the streets of east Port-of-Spain and Laven­tille up to late yes­ter­day, in a bid to pre­vent reprisal killings.In the first in­ci­dent, around 4 am, An­toine was at his grand­moth­er's Dun­can Street apart­ment when two men knocked on the front door.

Po­lice said when An­toine opened the door, the men at­tacked him, pulled him out­side and took him to a near­by al­ley.Min­utes af­ter An­toine was ab­duct­ed, res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing a vol­ley of gun­shots. When they checked be­hind near­by build­ings on George Street, they found the teenag­er ly­ing on the ground with gun­shot wounds about his body. He was pro­nounced dead on the scene. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said An­toine was shot more than 15 times.

With­in hours of An­toine's mur­der, homi­cide de­tec­tives were again called to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment com­plex.Res­i­dents told po­lice that around 2.15 pm they again heard a se­ries of gun­shots. When they checked Build­ing 27 on Dun­can Street, they found Shawn­delle Brath­waite, 18, ly­ing on the bot­tom of a flight of stairs which leads to an apart­ment he shared with Gomez, An­toine's cousin. Brath­waite had been shot in the shoul­der and chest.

When they checked the apart­ment, they found Gomez ly­ing un­con­scious on the floor with sev­er­al gun­shot wounds. The cou­ple was tak­en to Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where Gomez was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. Brath­waite un­der­went emer­gency surgery late yes­ter­day and was list­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.ASP Ajith Per­sad and In­sp Sa­hadeo Singh, of the Port-of-Spain CID, vis­it­ed both crime scenes and are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

While crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors and homi­cide de­tec­tives were pro­cess­ing the Gomez crime scene, they re­ceived a re­port of two mur­ders in Laven­tille which oc­curred al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.In one of the in­ci­dents, Lewis Jr was shot dead while re­pair­ing a car at a garage at Trot­man Lane.Po­lice said that around 4.15 pm, Lewis Jr was re­pair­ing the car on the road in front the garage when two gun­men sneaked up be­hind him and shot him six times in the head. He died on the scene.

Five min­utes lat­er, Pe­ters was shot dead while dri­ving along Quar­ry Street, Laven­tille.In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Pe­ters was dri­ving his sil­ver Nis­san Almera along the road when two gun­men ran along­side his ve­hi­cle and shot him sev­er­al times. Pe­ters crashed in­to a car which was parked at the side of the road. He was found slumped be­hind the steer­ing wheel and was pro­nounced dead on the scene.

When a team from the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Dun­can Street yes­ter­day, An­toine and Gomez's grand­moth­er de­scribed the killings as sense­less.The el­der­ly woman said: "Is two 16-year-olds they take. They sick. They will have to pay for that. I go­ing and pray for them (the teens' at­tack­ers)."The woman and oth­er rel­a­tives, who wished to re­main uniden­ti­fied, said Gomez re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed from the Ser­vol Life Cen­tre in Beetham Gar­dens and had re­ceived full pass­es in her CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

"She was plan­ning on go­ing back to school to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion. She was pro­duc­tive and did not want to live down here for­ev­er," a teenage girl, who claimed to be Gomez's best friend, said."Trinidad need plen­ty prayers right now," an el­der­ly res­i­dent said as he walked by the scene where Gomez was killed.The women said Gomez had a twin broth­er, Rasheed, who was deeply trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent.

Mean­while, around 10.30 pm on Tues­day, Williams was shot dead in an in­ci­dent near his home which al­so left three of his friends ward­ed at hos­pi­tal.Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Williams and his friends were lim­ing at the en­trance to his build­ing when the group was ap­proached by three gun­men. Po­lice said with­out warn­ing, the gun­men opened fire on the group be­fore run­ning away. The friends were tak­en to Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty and Williams was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

His friend, Teo Ed­ward, of Car­pen­ter Cres­cent, Mal­oney, was al­so shot sev­er­al times and was list­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion yes­ter­day. The two oth­er vic­tims sus­tained mi­nor in­juries and were treat­ed and dis­charged, po­lice said.North­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice al­so re­cent­ly iden­ti­fied the body found dumped near a riv­er in Mal­oney Gar­dens last month as that of Ju­dith-Ann Lon­don.

The woman, who lived in the build­ing next to Williams, was iden­ti­fied by her rel­a­tives. A post-mortem per­formed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James stat­ed that her cause of death was stran­gu­la­tion.Lon­don's se­mi-nude body was found by a group of Com­mu­ni­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) work­ers on Ju­ly 30. Po­lice have not de­ter­mined if Williams and Lon­don's mur­ders are con­nect­ed.