Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has ex­pressed shock and grief over the killing of busi­ness­man Steve Ghany Jr, re­veal­ing that he had spent time with him just days be­fore his death.

Ghany Jr, 37, of Alexan­der Road, Vista­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, was gunned down yes­ter­day morn­ing around 10 am, af­ter a con­fronta­tion with a fe­male rel­a­tive at his home.

The mur­der weapon, a li­censed firearm, was hand­ed over to the po­lice.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny at the Pe­nal Fire Head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he last saw Ghany over the week­end at a ri­fle range, where they en­gaged in recre­ation­al shoot­ing.

“Yeah, he was a friend of mine. Very sad… I nev­er ex­pect­ed this out­come that he would be dead,” the min­is­ter said.

“We went on the range, took a lit­tle sweat… so yeah, we met him.”

Ghany Jr, who was ac­tive­ly in­volved in his fam­i­ly’s con­struc­tion busi­ness and well known among jet ski en­thu­si­asts, was fac­ing do­mes­tic prob­lems and was la­belled as an “abuser” by friends and rel­a­tives of the woman.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the woman re­port­ed that she act­ed in self-de­fence, af­ter Ghany al­leged­ly threat­ened to kill her and her two daugh­ters, aged four and nine.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told that mul­ti­ple gun­shots rang out dur­ing the con­fronta­tion. Ghany sus­tained sev­er­al gun­shot wounds to the chest and was pro­nounced dead at the scene.

The woman lat­er hand­ed over a li­censed firearm to po­lice and re­mains in cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Her at­tor­ney, Prakash Ra­mad­har, de­clined to com­ment when con­tact­ed. Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers con­firmed that she is as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

When asked if he knew about Ghany’s prob­lems, Alexan­der said the full cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing re­main un­clear and must be de­ter­mined by in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

“Cir­cum­stances still look sketchy… in­ves­ti­ga­tors will de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what took place there,” he said, while ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the vic­tim’s rel­a­tives.

“I hope the good Lord bless his soul, and that the fam­i­ly will be able to live again af­ter this in­ci­dent.”

The min­is­ter not­ed that Ghany had nev­er shared any per­son­al strug­gles with him.

“Lis­ten, we try to keep fam­i­ly mat­ters per­son­al, you know what I mean? And I re­spect him for that. Had I known, prob­a­bly I would have tried to tell him oth­er­wise, but I did not,” he added.

A close friend of the rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia that over the past year, she had dis­tanced her­self from sev­er­al friends and spoke of on­go­ing threats.

That ac­count is now part of the wider probe in­to the fa­tal shoot­ing.

The killing has al­so drawn re­newed at­ten­tion to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, which Alexan­der de­scribed as a grow­ing con­cern.

He urged cit­i­zens to ad­dress con­flicts be­fore they es­ca­late.

“There are things some­times—mis­un­der­stand­ings be­tween peo­ple—and when you re­alise that, you fix it. It doesn’t have to reach to this.”

He stressed that strength­en­ing fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships is crit­i­cal to tack­ling crime, point­ing to the role of par­ents in shap­ing be­hav­iour.

“The par­ent is the foun­da­tion from where every­thing comes from. You must go back there to start,” Alexan­der said, an­nounc­ing that a se­ries of par­ent­ing work­shops will be launched this week as part of a broad­er crime pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy.

While mur­ders of­ten dom­i­nate pub­lic dis­course, Alexan­der said not all killings are linked to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.

“If you break down the mur­ders… this will go down as a mur­der, but what is it re­al­ly? Do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed?” he asked, ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to “hold faith” as the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues its an­ti-crime ef­forts.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty about ris­ing crime, he ac­knowl­edged that some op­er­a­tors have felt forced to scale back or close their op­er­a­tions, but em­pha­sised that mean­ing­ful change will take time.

“You can’t get up one morn­ing, and crime is gone. Every­thing is a process, and that process takes time,” he said, urg­ing cit­i­zens to share in­for­ma­tion with law en­force­ment.

Ghany’s killing is the sec­ond tragedy to af­fect the fam­i­ly In De­cem­ber 2024, Ghany’s step­moth­er, Mon­i­ca Ghany, was shot and killed while dri­ving along La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, af­ter vis­it­ing her ail­ing hus­band, Steve Ghany Snr. She was his sec­ond wife. Their son, Matthew, who is Ghany Ju­nior’s step-broth­er, was al­so in­jured in that at­tack but sur­vived.

As po­lice con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent, Alexan­der said the fo­cus must re­main on pre­vent­ing fur­ther tragedies.

“There must be im­prove­ment, and the pub­lic must ben­e­fit from that im­prove­ment,” he said.