Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try’s first mur­ders for 2024 were record­ed in Bel­mont and To­ba­go.

The first oc­curred in St Barb’s, Bel­mont, around 8 am and the vic­tim was Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) em­ploy­ee Adunde “Stems” Tele­maque, 41.

Res­i­dents told po­lice they heard a se­ries of loud ex­plo­sions and saw three masked men armed with firearms run­ning along the road­way. The men dis­ap­peared in­to a near­by track.

They lat­er found the body of a man ly­ing in a pool of blood and alert­ed the po­lice. Of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and the Homi­cide Bu­reau re­spond­ed.

Po­lice said Tele­maque sur­vived an­oth­er shoot­ing in­ci­dent some months ago.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his mur­der are be­ing led by of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion One.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed St Barb’s yes­ter­day, res­i­dents ex­pressed con­cern about in­creased crime in the area in re­cent months and blamed the up­surge on gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

In the oth­er in­ci­dent, 27-year-old Ka­reem Small was fa­tal­ly shot at a park in Pa­tience Hill, Scar­bor­ough.

Po­lice said Small was with an­oth­er man, iden­ti­fied as Keron No­ray, 27, when res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing loud ex­plo­sions. When they went to the scene, they found Small ly­ing mo­tion­less and No­ray with gun­shot wounds.

As­sem­bly­man Nigel Taitt, who vis­it­ed the scene, said he knew the vic­tim but didn’t know him to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I’m sad, I’m hurt. I know the vic­tim quite well,” Taitt told re­porters.

“He come like my own child so I am feel­ing it. He’s a very ac­tive per­son. I don’t know him to be in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty what­so­ev­er.”

He ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to put down the guns.

“Let us stop it please, please, I am beg­ging, both Trinidad and To­ba­go. Let’s put down the guns. We are not get­ting any­where with the guns,” he said.

Taitt al­so not­ed that there had been com­ments on so­cial me­dia blam­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for the in­crease in mur­ders on the is­land. To­ba­go end­ed 2023 with 15 mur­ders.

“How can you blame the Chief Sec­re­tary for some­thing like this?” he asked.

“This has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics. This is about the youths be­ing mis­guid­ed by the mu­sic, by so­cial me­dia. How the Chief Sec­re­tary name could call in this? What we have to do is re­port the per­sons who are il­le­gal­ly car­ry­ing firearms and in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.”