Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A quick lime be­fore work on Fri­day morn­ing al­most end­ed in death for 50-year-old Cur­tis John, when gun­men opened fire on him and oth­er passers-by near his Bel­mont home.

John was shot in his left leg, while his friend 24-year-old Ta­far­wa Roberts was shot in his head. Roberts re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Mean­while, one of the sus­pects is dead while the oth­er sur­ren­dered to the po­lice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in Bel­mont short­ly af­ter be­ing dis­charged from the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, John said he was grate­ful to be alive and nev­er ex­pect­ed to be the vic­tim of such a vi­o­lent, un­pro­voked at­tack.

Re­call­ing the in­ci­dent, John said he was wait­ing for two of his co-work­ers near a neigh­bour­hood par­lour when he and oth­ers saw a sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da dri­ve along Ser­re­neau Road.

He said near­by res­i­dents were un­easy as they could not recog­nise the dri­ver, es­pe­cial­ly as ru­mours of an on­go­ing gang war cir­cu­lat­ed with­in the neigh­bour­hood.

“As I’m bring­ing a beer for my friend and stand­ing by a car, I see a car come dri­ving in­to the road and those guys were watch­ing the ve­hi­cle and won­der­ing if this was a taxi. We know there were strange cars, but with every­thing you have to be watch­ing your back.”

Ges­tur­ing with one of the crutch­es he now re­lies on to walk, John said, “I saw the bar­rel of a gun like this from the back seat. They came out and start­ed shoot­ing.”

John said while he did not freeze, he was shocked at how quick­ly the at­tack un­fold­ed. “Things hap­pen, and you know how dan­ger­ous the place is. You have to lis­ten, watch, and ob­serve at all times. No­body can know what will hap­pen next.”

John, who works as a trades­man, main­tained that he was not the in­tend­ed tar­get of the gun­men and was not a crim­i­nal. He al­so com­mend­ed the doc­tors and med­ical staff at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for their care.

“They treat me well. I’m not like one of those pa­tients who gives trou­ble,” John joked.

John was helped to his home by rel­a­tives as he was still in pain fol­low­ing the at­tack.

High praise for po­lice

One rel­a­tive lament­ed the un­pre­dictable na­ture of such at­tacks and how eas­i­ly young men were in­flu­enced to do the bid­ding of crim­i­nals. “They have no sense. They’re be­ing mis­led by old­er ones who say they are gang lead­ers. These lead­ers are en­cour­ag­ing them from an ear­ly age to do all kinds of fool­ish­ness, not know­ing it will come back to haunt them some­time. Trinidad and To­ba­go is too small to be go­ing through these prob­lems.”

De­spite his con­cerns, the rel­a­tive said he was pleased with the quick re­sponse of var­i­ous po­lice units who were called in and even­tu­al­ly cap­tured the two sus­pects.

A po­lice me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day re­vealed that of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Port-of-Spain Task Force, and the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing and ar­rest­ed the men.

One of the sus­pects re­port­ed­ly point­ed a gun at the of­fi­cers as he hid in a near­by drain on the St Fran­cois Val­ley Road.

Po­lice shot the man, killing him. While the me­dia re­lease did not con­firm the man’s iden­ti­ty, they re­port­ed that he was an 18-year-old man from McK­ai Lands, Bel­mont.

The sec­ond sus­pect sur­ren­dered to po­lice and was ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers found and seized two AR-15 ri­fles with 47 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed St Fran­cois Val­ley Road yes­ter­day and spoke with res­i­dents who praised the of­fi­cers for their ef­forts in find­ing the gun­men.

One Bel­mont busi­ness own­er said while she did not see the shoot­ing, she re­mem­bered hear­ing gun­shots and tak­ing cov­er. She said she was im­pressed with the of­fi­cers’ re­sponse, crawl­ing through nar­row drains to catch the sus­pects as the dra­ma un­fold­ed.

“Peo­ple of­ten say the po­lice don’t work, but I saw with my own two eyes how hard they worked yes­ter­day (Fri­day). They went down in the canal, and they came out soak­ing wet. They wet up to their chests with that dirty drain wa­ter. I saw them run­ning, and I thought some were lazy, but they ran the fastest, and by the end they were tired.”

One long-time Bel­mont res­i­dent, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Car­los, said he was grate­ful for the swift re­sponse from the po­lice and was hap­py that no in­no­cent passers-by were hurt as the of­fi­cer ar­rest­ed the sus­pects.

He said he re­mem­bered hear­ing gun­shots just af­ter mid­day on Fri­day but did not think much of it, as the sound of gun­fire in the neigh­bour­hood had be­come more com­mon in re­cent times.

“When I go in­side, I don’t come out at all. But when I saw the po­lice ar­rest those guys, it gave me some en­cour­age­ment that they were still around.”

One man said in ad­di­tion to the re­sponse of the po­lice, he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the tact and dis­cre­tion used by the of­fi­cers in find­ing the sus­pects with­out dis­rupt­ing and trau­ma­tis­ing the stu­dents at the school.

“They didn’t just charge in and or­der the school to be dis­missed. They care­ful­ly wait­ed in the area and did what they had to do.”

BOX

Bel­mont coun­cil­lor trou­bled; se­nior cop vows to se­cure schools

On her Face­book ac­count yes­ter­day, Bel­mont East coun­cil­lor Nicole Young said she was deeply trou­bled by the shoot­ing and ex­tend­ed her sup­port to the stu­dents of St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege, who were shak­en. Young al­so thanked the po­lice for their quick re­sponse and praised the com­mu­ni­ty for their strength through­out the in­ci­dent.

“I un­der­stand that both the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice have made con­tact with the school and will be pro­vid­ing psy­choso­cial sup­port to the stu­dents and staff. Their ef­forts are cru­cial in help­ing our com­mu­ni­ty heal and move for­ward.”

In their me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, po­lice con­firmed of­fi­cers of their Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit would vis­it the school on Mon­day to of­fer sup­port to staff and stu­dents. The at­tack is the sec­ond shoot­ing to hap­pen near a school this week, as two men, Ger­ard Cal­liste, 36, and Ke­mo Cal­liste, 32, were gunned down out­side Rox­anne’s Learn­ing and Child­care Cen­tre in Mal­ick on Wednes­day.

A four-year-old boy and his 48-year-old god­moth­er were wound­ed dur­ing this at­tack.

In the re­lease, head of the Port of Spain Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom said vi­o­lence in and around schools was un­ac­cept­able and vowed that the po­lice would work to­wards en­hanc­ing safe­ty for chil­dren.

“We will do what is nec­es­sary for all schools to re­main’safe spaces.’ There is no place for this kind of law­less­ness in our com­mu­ni­ties, and we will con­tin­ue to take a firm stand to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly our chil­dren.”