An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

A Bel­mont teenag­er was shot in the leg dur­ing an al­leged dri­ve-by shoot­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The 16-year-old. of Wa­ter­man Lane. re­port­ed­ly told of­fi­cials he was at the St Fran­cois Plan­nings, Bel­mont, around 3 pm, when the oc­cu­pants of a sil­ver Toy­ota Aqua opened fire on him.

The in­jured teenag­er was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH), where he was treat­ed and ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, sev­er­al of the young men, as well as oth­er el­der­ly res­i­dents in the com­plex, de­nied the in­ci­dent oc­curred as was be­ing claimed.

En­joy­ing the qui­et and calm of the af­ter­noon as they milled around in the open court­yard, the group said they had been present all day and had not heard a sin­gle gun­shot with­in the com­plex or in the sur­round­ing area.

The men re­peat­ed­ly de­nied there had been a dri­ve-by, as one moth­er watched her two young chil­dren play­ing on a near­by swing.

Uni­formed of­fi­cers in a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle drove through the com­plex, al­so hunt­ing for the al­leged crime scene.

Claims lat­er sur­faced that the in­jured teenag­er may have been “hand­ed” a firearm to hold and could have been play­ing with it, when it went off and in­jured him.

Po­lice were un­able to con­firm this up to late yes­ter­day, as they said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­tin­u­ing.

This al­leged in­ci­dent came less than one day af­ter three peo­ple, in­clud­ing 23-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, were killed af­ter gun­men opened fire on the car they were trav­el­ling in along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont.

The triple homi­cide al­so claimed the lives of Kafi’s fa­ther Aquil Kafi and his friend An­tho­ny Wil­son, while Aki­ni’s moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, re­mained ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the PoS­GH yes­ter­day.