Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two res­i­dents of the Man­go Rose Hous­ing Com­plex in east Port-of-Spain have ex­pressed con­cern that the com­pound may con­tin­ue to be the site of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents, call­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to ad­dress sev­er­al press­ing is­sues.

Last Thurs­day, 33-year-old Dwayne Si­mon was shot dead at the com­plex, while two oth­er men sus­tained gun­shot wounds.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, res­i­dent An­dre Hold­er, who has lived at the hous­ing com­plex since 2003, said safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the area have pro­gres­sive­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over the years, with shoot­ings in­creas­ing in fre­quen­cy in 2021 and 2022.

Hold­er, 51, who is al­so a po­lice­man as­signed to the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, ref­er­enced sev­er­al let­ters writ­ten on his be­half by se­nior of­fi­cers, Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, and oth­er of­fi­cials re­quest­ing his re­lo­ca­tion from the com­plex. De­spite these ef­forts, Hold­er con­tin­ues to live there but said he is in­creas­ing­ly un­easy, point­ing to pho­tos of bul­let holes in the walls, win­dows, and even ap­pli­ances in his apart­ment.

While Hold­er does not be­lieve he is be­ing specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed, he said the preva­lence of shoot­ings makes it like­ly he could even­tu­al­ly be struck by stray gun­fire.

“One day my luck would run out, and you may hear that PC Hold­er picked up a stray bul­let in his apart­ment,” he said.

“That is how dire the sit­u­a­tion is. I have had bul­lets come through my kitchen… one even went through my win­dow and my mi­crowave. This is not the first time—it hap­pened in 2014 and 2022. This is what I have to go through.”

Hold­er said he was ini­tial­ly ad­vised not to ap­proach the me­dia, but he has be­come in­creas­ing­ly des­per­ate for as­sis­tance.

“The sound of gun­fire has be­come a fair­ly reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence. Some­times I am afraid to sleep at night. When­ev­er I hear gun­fire, I roll off my bed and take cov­er be­tween the wardrobe and my bed. De­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty, I some­times have to seek safe­ty in the bath­room, lit­er­al­ly crawl­ing on my knees,” he added.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Shawn Lewis, said he has raised con­cerns with the HDC since last Oc­to­ber, in­clud­ing a com­plaint ear­li­er this week re­gard­ing in­di­vid­u­als oc­cu­py­ing units il­le­gal­ly.

Lewis, a life­long res­i­dent of east Port-of-Spain, said he feared that those in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and liv­ing il­le­gal­ly in the units could be­come tar­gets of ri­vals, adding to the dan­ger faced by res­i­dents. He al­so high­light­ed dam­age to the build­ing’s in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing pipes and a wa­ter tank, caused by a spate of shoot­ings late last year.

While Lewis said he has per­son­al­ly paid to re­place the pipes and a pump, he hopes the HDC will take a more proac­tive role in man­ag­ing the build­ing.

“We worked hard to buy a pump and in­stall it to get wa­ter ac­cess. I have spent over $5,000 from Sep­tem­ber last year to the present. The HDC is aware of this and thanked me, but I’m not seek­ing any ku­dos. What I need is their sup­port. If they are not sup­port­ing me with these is­sues, when will they? To date, I haven’t seen any HDC of­fi­cials at the com­plex,” he said.

Ques­tions were sent to the HDC’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, but there was no re­sponse by news time. At­tempts to con­tact HDC chair Feeroz Khan via phone and What­sApp were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.