Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Mur­ders in and around Gua­napo in Ari­ma, all with­in walk­ing dis­tance of each oth­er, have left the com­mu­ni­ty paral­ysed with fear. Heav­i­ly armed gun­men are re­port­ed­ly us­ing the forest­ed ar­eas around the com­mu­ni­ty to hide, track, and am­bush their vic­tims.

In Ju­ly, five peo­ple were killed and a four-year-old boy wound­ed af­ter shoot­ings in Gua­napo. Even as of­fi­cial TTPS da­ta show a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the num­ber of mur­ders in the North­ern Di­vi­sion for 2024, res­i­dents of that area ex­pe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent re­al­i­ty where sim­ply walk­ing out­side their homes is a risk as any­one–crim­i­nal or not—is a tar­get.

“No­body not safe, be­cause it’s every­one they’re killing, whether man, woman, or chil­dren,” one res­i­dent iden­ti­fied on­ly as Ri­ta told Guardian Me­dia last week. The woman who de­scribed her­self as a life­long Gua­napo res­i­dent said the uptick in vi­o­lence was a rel­a­tive­ly re­cent phe­nom­e­non that be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2023 with the mur­der of sib­lings Faith, Ar­i­an­na, Shain and Tiffany Pe­terkin at their La Re­treat home.

Two men, Jalani Rivers, 22 and Jodel Noel, 24, were charged with the mur­ders in Oc­to­ber. How­ev­er, their ar­rests did not quell the blood­shed, which re­sumed in Ju­ly this year.

“It’s some­thing that can hap­pen ei­ther night or day,” Ri­ta said.

“Gua­napo wasn’t al­ways like this; it used to be a re­al­ly nice place to live, but dif­fer­ent groups start­ed to come to­geth­er and ex­clude oth­ers, which led to this gun­play.”

Ari­ma is part of the TTPS North­ern Di­vi­sion, which has typ­i­cal­ly been a high-crime area ow­ing to the large pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty and close­ness to the North-Cen­tral and Cen­tral di­vi­sions, where po­lice be­lieve crim­i­nals can slip across bound­aries to es­cape.

The di­vi­sion’s crime prob­lems were al­so ac­knowl­edged by for­mer head Snr Supt Christo­pher Pa­ponette dur­ing a town hall meet­ing in 2022, when he ad­mit­ted that the area ac­count­ed for the high­est por­tion of se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes (SRCs) over the last five years.

The di­vi­sion, which ex­tends from Mal­oney in the west to Cu­mu­to in the East, con­sists of a mix of ur­banised ar­eas mixed with large por­tions of farm­land and dense for­est at the foot of the North­ern Range. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in March, North­ern Di­vi­sion head, Snr Supt Miguel Mon­trichard re­port­ed that there were six gangs in the di­vi­sion with 139 mem­bers.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Thurs­day, the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit said there were four known gangs in the area.

Of these four, po­lice in the Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (GIU) said at least three gangs are op­er­a­tional in Gua­napo: the Sev­en gang, the Re­sis­tance and a small clique of Mus­lim gang­sters.

The of­fi­cer stat­ed that due to the prox­im­i­ty of these groups, con­flict was un­avoid­able.

Da­ta from the TTPS Com­mis­sion­er’s Comp­stat (Com­par­a­tive Sta­tis­tics) meet­ing showed that the rate of mur­ders in the North­ern Di­vi­sion has slowed for the year thus far. Be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and Au­gust 5 this year, there were on­ly 37 mur­ders for the North­ern Di­vi­sion, three of which were de­tect­ed, com­pared to 53 mur­ders for the same pe­ri­od in 2023, where eight were de­tect­ed and peo­ple charged.

Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, the Port-of-Spain, East­ern, and To­ba­go di­vi­sions had the high­est in­creas­es in mur­ders for the year thus far, with the South­ern Di­vi­sion al­so show­ing a small in­crease of five per cent.

As of Wednes­day af­ter­noon, the mur­der toll was 366, com­pared to 345 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Cops chal­lenged as killers use forest­ed ter­rain to hide out

Gua­napo is lo­cat­ed three kilo­me­tres to the east of Ari­ma’s com­mer­cial dis­trict and is con­nect­ed by a wind­ing net­work of roads ex­tend­ing through sprawl­ing farm­land and steep, hilly forests fur­ther north.

These paved roads branch off in­to nar­row­er roads and dirt tracks, cre­at­ing a maze of paths. Some of these paths don’t even have of­fi­cial names or ap­pear on Google Maps. This lay­out, res­i­dents said, gives gun­men an ad­van­tage as they can am­bush their vic­tims be­fore es­cap­ing in­to the sur­round­ing dense­ly forest­ed area as eas­i­ly as they ap­peared, mak­ing the at­tacks fast and un­pre­dictable.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in Gua­napo, in­clud­ing La Re­treat Road, Dump Road, and sev­er­al small­er roads that the gun­men re­port­ed­ly use.

One of the streets branch­ing off of the Heights of Gua­napo Road op­po­site the Gua­napo land­fill is Ceme­tery Street, which leads to dif­fer­ent tracks that can be used to ac­cess any point to the east or west of the com­mu­ni­ty. On Ju­ly 15, 57-year-old An­tho­ny John was gunned down just be­fore 6 am near his La Re­treat, Gua­napo home, by gun­men who wait­ed in near­by bush­es. Ri­ta, the Gua­napo res­i­dent, said the gangs’ strat­e­gy to use the for­est as cov­er has ren­dered con­ven­tion­al po­lice pa­trols in­ef­fec­tive.

She said while po­lice pa­trols have been more rou­tine since the Pe­terkin mur­ders in 2023, the of­fi­cers sel­dom left their ve­hi­cles as they drove through the area.

“Those crim­i­nals aren’t dumb; what they’ve been do­ing is cut­ting their own paths be­hind the (Gua­napo) land­fill and mov­ing through those ar­eas with their guns.

“We used to walk through the back as a short­cut to get to a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber or even just to get to the (Ari­ma) by­pass, but we don’t any­more be­cause you don’t know who or what you could bounce up.

“The po­lice do their dri­ve-through on the hill here; they turn, and then they go their way. They don’t park up and stay for two hours.” In their What­sApp re­sponse, the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions spokesper­son ad­mit­ted that pa­trolling such ar­eas was dif­fi­cult.

“There are the in­her­ent chal­lenges when polic­ing this type of ter­rain, how­ev­er, we are util­is­ing all avail­able re­sources and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er units and branch­es to get the job done.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Tumpuna Road of­fice on Wednes­day, Deputy Ari­ma May­or and Tumpuna coun­cil­lor Jo­van Roberts ad­mit­ted that re­source­ful crim­i­nals used the forest­ed ar­eas to their ad­van­tage. “La Re­treat Road is a unique en­vi­ron­ment in that it is forest­ed, so per­sons can make their own tracks; they can make their own re­treat routes, and it would be dif­fi­cult for them to be de­tect­ed. It’s al­most a cat-and-mouse game (with the po­lice).

“It’s ter­ri­fy­ing when you hear from some of the La Re­treat res­i­dents what is go­ing on, but I know the po­lice are re­spond­ing even with the dif­fi­cul­ties they have up there with the ter­rain.”

How­ev­er, the TTPS spokesper­son said chal­lenges to se­cur­ing Gua­napo ex­tend be­yond ef­fec­tive pa­trols, cit­ing a “dis­con­nect” be­tween the com­mu­ni­ty and the po­lice.

The spokesper­son did not go in­to fur­ther de­tails on what this com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap was caused by but said the TTPS was work­ing to­wards fos­ter­ing bet­ter re­la­tions with res­i­dents. In ad­di­tion to the safe­ty con­cerns at Gua­napo/La Re­treat, Roberts said the is­sue of crim­i­nals al­so af­fect­ed the Tumpuna com­mu­ni­ty.

“On an al­most night­ly ba­sis, one or two per­sons would have at­tempt­ed home in­va­sions. But the per­sons who are re­spon­si­ble for the home in­va­sions may be very fa­mil­iar with the area be­cause they were very dif­fi­cult to de­tect.”

Roberts said clos­er con­sul­ta­tion with the dis­trict po­lice and a strength­ened neigh­bour­hood watch sys­tem led to the in­ci­dents com­ing to an end. But even with this achieve­ment, gang war­fare con­tin­ued to emerge in oth­er parts of Ari­ma.

Sama­roo Vil­lage res­i­dents liv­ing in fear

Dus­tan Bas­combe has spent his en­tire life in Sama­roo Vil­lage, Ari­ma. The 76-year-old has seen first-hand the changes in his com­mu­ni­ty, from the de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy to paved roads, but ad­mits the lat­est se­ries of mur­ders has left him sad­dened and fear­ful for the fu­ture.

Bas­combe’s youngest son, 21-year-old Emer­son Bouch­er, to­geth­er with his friend Michael De Gazon, 27, were gunned down dur­ing a dri­ve-by shoot­ing out­side his Ed­ma Street, Sama­roo Vil­lage home on Mon­day night. Fears of vi­o­lent re­tal­i­a­tion af­ter the beat­ing of a young woman by mem­bers of a gang in the com­mu­ni­ty cir­cu­lat­ed for some time.

A video of the beat­ing was cir­cu­lat­ed on What­sApp, where one of the men was heard ques­tion­ing the woman over whether she was a Mus­lim and what she was do­ing in Sama­roo Vil­lage.

Bas­combe said while it was like­ly his son and his friends heard of the ru­mours of an im­pend­ing at­tack from mem­bers of a ri­val gang, they were not fear­ful as they knew they were not in­volved in any­thing il­le­gal and felt they would be spared. They were wrong.

“Peo­ple in the area said they saw the car the gun­men were trav­el­ling in dri­ve straight past them (Bouch­er and De Gazon) at first. Those (crim­i­nals) were not af­ter my son and his friends; they were look­ing for some­one else, and they couldn’t find them. In­stead, they just set­tled for who they could see, and that just hap­pened to be my son.”

Re­call­ing the events of that night, Bas­combe said his son cooked a meal and shared it with friends as they sat near a sil­ver car out­side their home and limed.

He said his son briefly went in­side the house to help him use his cell­phone but re­turned out­side again to lime with his friends when the shoot­ing be­gan. Bas­combe said the un­pre­dictable na­ture of killings, where in­no­cent peo­ple were tar­get­ed sim­ply be­cause of which neigh­bour­hood they were from, high­light­ed the dan­gers they faced.

“I could have been out there too, just pass­ing or lim­ing with them, and just like that, I could have been one of the vic­tims. I don’t know what they (crim­i­nals) get­ting out of this.

“How do they feel when they kill a man and sleep and get up on a morn­ing? How do they live af­ter that?”

One of Bas­combe’s neigh­bours, James Singh re­called hear­ing the sound of gun­fire on Mon­day night and orig­i­nal­ly thought it was some­one try­ing to break down his front door. He said he felt the vi­o­lence was far from over, as oth­er at­tacks were pos­si­ble un­til the in­tend­ed tar­gets were found.

“They (gang­sters) came back, and who­ev­er they catch on the cor­ner, they just lick up.

“I know those guys (Bouch­er and De Gazon) since they were lit­tle fel­las and they were just sit­ting down re­lax­ing.

“It will have fol­low-up on this be­cause they will want to get at that per­son.”

Roberts said the re­cent spate of vi­o­lence in Ari­ma has been a ma­jor con­cern to him, but main­tained that the bor­ough was safe. He not­ed that as the bor­ough of Ari­ma cel­e­brates its 136th an­niver­sary, the mur­ders, while trou­bling, should not be al­lowed to shad­ow the com­mu­ni­ty’s lega­cy and his­to­ry.

Ari­ma mur­ders be­tween Ju­ly and Au­gust

• Emer­son Bouch­er, 21 and Michael De Gazon, 27, were gunned down in Sama­roo Vil­lage, Ari­ma on Au­gust 5.

• Jamiela Cum­ber­batch, 26, was shot and killed at her La Re­treat Road, home on Ju­ly 28. Cum­ber­batch was the niece of Ey­on Mur­ray who was mur­dered days ear­li­er.

• On Ju­ly 24, 58-year-old Ey­on Mur­ray was shot and killed near the Gua­napo land­fill on Dump Road.

• On Ju­ly 18, the body of Bran­don Bruce, 21, was found in the Heights of Aripo. Bruce’s body had sev­er­al bul­let holes.

• An­tho­ny John, 57, was about to walk in­to his La Re­treat Road home on Ju­ly 15, when two gun­men shot him sev­er­al times be­fore es­cap­ing through near­by bush­es.

• On Ju­ly 13, Dwayne Richard­son, 34 and his com­mon-law-wife La­toya Voisin, 31, were at their Mau­tu­ri­ta home, when gun­men stormed the house shoot­ing them. Their four-year-old son was al­so shot in the at­tack.