DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Chris­t­ian Birch­wood is rais­ing con­cern over a surge in vi­o­lence in his con­stituen­cy af­ter four peo­ple were killed in Mor­vant with­in 48 hours.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Birch­wood ac­knowl­edged the stig­ma of vi­o­lence of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with com­mu­ni­ties in Laven­tille, but said the re­cent killings should not be con­sid­ered nor­mal.

He said some of the in­ci­dents may have oc­curred with­in the neigh­bour­ing Laven­tille West con­stituen­cy, as com­mu­ni­ties along the bor­der are shared be­tween the two elec­toral dis­tricts.

But Birch­wood said the killings are par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling be­cause they oc­curred while the coun­try re­mains un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

“It speaks to how in­ef­fec­tive the SoE has been in par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties. And hope­ful­ly we see some sun­light at the end of this tun­nel that we’re cur­rent­ly go­ing through.”

Birch­wood called for an end to the vi­o­lence.

Four men have been killed in Mor­vant since Tues­day morn­ing, with the lat­est vic­tim, 21-year-old Nathaniel Lewis, shot dead at about 5 am on Thurs­day.

Po­lice said Lewis was at his home in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia when gun­men en­tered and opened fire.

He fled the house but was pur­sued and shot sev­er­al times af­ter col­laps­ing on the road.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, Lewis’ rel­a­tives de­clined to com­ment, and most res­i­dents were re­luc­tant to speak about the killings.

One woman, who said she had lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for 81 years, said Thurs­day was the first time she had felt so un­easy there.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who has lived in the area for 50 years, said he had “no good feel­ing” about the sit­u­a­tion.

Three men gath­ered op­po­site the scene where Lewis was killed called on MP Birch­wood to do more to sup­port young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

On Wednes­day morn­ing, po­lice found the body of 57-year-old Clarence Thomp­son in a bushy area be­hind his home at Crichlow Trace, Chi­napoo.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed­ly heard gun­shots at about 10 pm on Tues­day. About 12 hours lat­er, vol­un­teers from the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team lo­cat­ed Thomp­son’s body and di­rect­ed po­lice to the scene.

On Tues­day night, the body of 62-year-old Steve Grif­fith was found along a track in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia.

Ear­li­er that day, Tyrell Hink­son was shot and killed.