Ar­son­ists torched 15 ve­hi­cles on the com­pound of HSM Mo­tors in Chase Vil­lage, Cara­pichaima, yes­ter­day, in an at­tack that left the own­er puz­zled.

HSM chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer/di­rec­tor Mikhail Ho­sein was left count­ing mil­lions in dam­age, since the fires, set to ve­hi­cles in at least two sep­a­rate ar­eas on the com­pound, spread to build­ings as well.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at his deal­er­ship yes­ter­day, Ho­sein said, “Three in­di­vid­u­als would have en­tered the com­pound cross­ing over from Pas­tor Cuffie’s side where they fire­bombed sev­er­al ve­hi­cles on the com­pound.”

As the CEO re­count­ed what tran­spired, he said CCTV footage showed the per­pe­tra­tors pour­ing a liq­uid, sus­pect­ed to be fu­el, on the cars, break­ing the glass­es to wet in­side, then set­ting them alight.

A to­tal of 15 high-end ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing a Tes­la and Ho­sein’s per­son­al ve­hi­cle, a Toy­ota Supra, were burnt out.

The fire spread to two build­ings, in­clud­ing HSM’s show­room and ser­vice cen­tre.

Ho­sein said the fire start­ed around 3 and the Fire Ser­vice ar­rived around 4 am and man­aged to save most of the cars and the in­fra­struc­ture.

Asked why some­one would go to such ex­treme mea­sures to de­stroy HSM prop­er­ty, Ho­sein said he could not think of any­one who would want to de­stroy his com­pa­ny or threat­en his life.

He said, “We’re sur­prised, con­fused, there are so many ad­jec­tives I could use to de­scribe this but we re­al­ly don’t know. We can’t be­gin to un­der­stand what has hap­pened here ... I would nev­er be­lieve some­thing like this could hap­pen, es­pe­cial­ly fire like that. I mean you could un­der­stand ve­hi­cles be­ing stolen but fire­bomb­ing ve­hi­cles is some­thing to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent.”

Asked if he feels his life is now threat­ened fol­low­ing the hit on his busi­ness, Ho­sein said yes.

Some HSM em­ploy­ees al­so told Guardian Me­dia that the at­tack had left them shak­en up.

But on the top­ic of ex­tor­tion, Ho­sein said HSM owed no one debt nor did it have any en­e­mies.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to po­lice to in­quire about pos­si­ble ex­tor­tion by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, one source in the TTPS’ Cen­tral di­vi­sion said while there was no in­for­ma­tion at present to sug­gest ex­tor­tion, it had not been ruled out.

As both fire and po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue, HSM’s man­age­ment said the com­pa­ny will re­main closed un­til fur­ther no­tice, but it will try to fa­cil­i­tate ex­ist­ing cus­tomers as best as pos­si­ble.

Ho­sein said HSM em­ploys 30 peo­ple and the com­pa­ny was in the process of “re­group­ing” to re-open in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

HSM has been in the car deal­er­ship for the past 22 years and sells both new and used cars, in­clud­ing lux­u­ry cars.

Fire pre­ven­tion of­fi­cers from the T&T Fire Ser­vice’s Cen­tral Di­vi­sion found sev­er­al si­mul­ta­ne­ous sources of fire on the com­pound, an in­di­ca­tion that dis­tinct fires were start­ed ma­li­cious­ly.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) head Visham Bab­wah said at­tacks on car deal­ers have been go­ing on for some time.

“This is not the first time that deal­er­ships have been tar­get­ed. Oth­er deal­ers have been tar­get­ed for oth­er rea­sons in the past. Busi­ness­es were bro­ken in­to and dif­fer­ent is­sues,” Bab­wah said.

How­ev­er, Bab­wah said he has no re­ports that TTA­DA mem­bers were be­ing tar­get­ed for ex­tor­tion. He said deal­ers should be care­ful.

“Crime is out of con­trol. The Gov­ern­ment is al­ways blam­ing some­body else, they blame par­ents, they blame so­ci­ety, but the buck stops with the Gov­ern­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter.”

Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh was al­so ap­palled at the at­tack.

Not­ing that Ho­sein was a val­ued ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of cham­ber, Ram­s­ingh said, “We strong­ly con­demn this act of ar­son. We are out­raged that this busi­ness was at­tacked. We hope that the au­thor­i­ties move swift­ly to ap­pre­hend the per­sons re­spon­si­ble.

“It was on­ly yes­ter­day that a res­i­dent of Cou­va was killed in an ar­son at­tack at the Ex­change Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment. We are hop­ing that copy­cat crim­i­nals do not seek to burn the res­i­dences and busi­ness­es of peo­ple. When this hap­pens lives are lost, in­fra­struc­ture is dam­aged and peo­ple go un­em­ployed. At HSM, for­tu­nate­ly no one was in­jured. The com­pa­ny has around 30 em­ploy­ees who would be af­fect­ed in some way or the oth­er, be it emo­tion­al­ly or oth­er­wise.”

Al­so con­tact­ed, Cou­va North MP Ravi Rati­ram said crime con­tin­ues to be the num­ber one is­sue af­fect­ing T&T.

Rati­ram said, “CEOs, friends and fam­i­lies of this Gov­ern­ment are re­ceiv­ing 24/7 per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty, cit­i­zens and busi­ness­men con­tin­ue to live in fear of be­com­ing the next vic­tim. Where is the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol? Shut down by this Row­ley PNM. Where are the CCTV cam­eras? Non-func­tion­al, not work­ing, de­stroyed by this Row­ley PNM.

“While cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to call for the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to be fired be­cause he is sleep­ing in of­fice, PM Row­ley con­tin­ues to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the cit­i­zens. I want to tell PM Row­ley and Min­is­ter Hinds that not every day is Sun­day and that time longer than twine. They have turned their backs on the cit­i­zen, and I am sure that it is on­ly a mat­ter of time that our cit­i­zens will do the same to­wards them.”