Al­though res­i­dents of Harpe Place, Port-of-Spain have be­gun to re­ceive coun­selling fol­low­ing the mass shoot­ing on March 16 that left five peo­ple dead, they say it is not enough to help al­le­vi­ate the men­tal trau­ma and anx­i­ety they con­tin­ue to suf­fer dai­ly.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia 17 days af­ter the dead­ly mid-morn­ing in­ci­dent, sev­er­al men and women yes­ter­day said Harpe Place was still un­safe.

Ad­mit­ting they were fright­ened every time a car slowed or stopped in front of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) site at Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street, one woman said, “Right now, we are un­safe. We want prop­er gates and high­er walls. That would be a start to help­ing us feel safe again.”

The makeshift bar­ri­ers, the res­i­dents erect­ed af­ter the dead­ly shoot­ing are still up. The scared woman point­ed to the emp­ty bar­rels, bro­ken chairs and con­crete blocks be­ing used to pre­vent ve­hi­cles from dri­ving in and out of the de­vel­op­ment freely and asked, “What more have to hap­pen here be­fore we get some help?”

Re­gard­ing the coun­selling be­ing done by the TTPS’ Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit, she added, “What they com­ing to talk ... be­cause that talk­ing not help­ing we ei­ther.”

El­der­ly peo­ple, women and chil­dren peeked out from be­hind closed win­dows and pad­locked doors yes­ter­day, afraid to ven­ture out as the mem­o­ries re­main fresh in their minds.

While sev­er­al groups of young men were seen sit­ting in pock­ets across the small yard and one group played cards un­der a near­by tent, they re­mained ever watch­ful – turn­ing con­stant­ly as a car drove past or some­one walked by.

Beryl Bap­tiste, 80, said she is the aunt of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and a life-long res­i­dent at Harpe Place.

Sit­ting out­side for the first time since the shoot­ing, the el­der­ly woman said the com­mu­ni­ty had not re­cov­ered from the dev­as­tat­ing shoot­ing and that a sense of un­ease had now en­veloped the area.

Un­der the tent across from a pic­ture board which con­tained ten pho­tos of 12 peo­ple from the de­vel­op­ment who had been killed since the year be­gan, Bap­tiste said it had been post­ed on the spot where a con­crete bench had once been in­stalled.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that the spot had been a pop­u­lar place where many would gath­er as was the case on the fate­ful day, so a de­ci­sion was tak­en to de­mol­ish it and pave the area.

Bap­tiste said while Hinds had not vis­it­ed her since the in­ci­dent, she claimed they had spo­ken on the phone.

She called for four gates to be in­stalled as one of the first mea­sures to as­sist in se­cur­ing the lo­ca­tion. She al­so said more pa­trols were need­ed.

“In years past, we used to have them all the time, but now...we does hard­ly see them,” Bap­tiste said.

Even as Bap­tiste said this, a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle with two TTPS of­fi­cers and two sol­diers drove slow­ly through the com­mu­ni­ty.

Re­fer­ring to the killings, she said it was on­ly this week­end that she had re­sumed eat­ing as nor­mal, as she had been “off her game since.”