A Cen­tral busi­ness­man was one of two peo­ple mur­dered in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Ch­agua­nas and San­gre Grande Tues­day night in­to yes­ter­day, tak­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s homi­cide toll to 164.

The vic­tims were iden­ti­fied as Rishard Ali, 48 and Bri­an Ben­nett, 37.

Ali, a well-known busi­ness­man from Bil­jah Road, Ch­agua­nas, was fa­tal­ly shot dur­ing a car­jack­ing at­tempt that oc­curred near his home at 8 am.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, a gun­man con­front­ed Ali and at­tempt­ed to steal his ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, Ali re­sist­ed, re­sult­ing in a con­fronta­tion which led to his shoot­ing.

The sus­pect fled the scene and Ali was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he died.

Ali was the sec­ond busi­ness­man killed in re­cent days.

On Fri­day night, Bing Zhu Zang, 49, the own­er of Gold­en City Su­per­mar­ket at Sil­ver Mill, San Juan, was killed by one of three ban­dits who con­front­ed him on the prop­er­ty, when he re­turned to his busi­ness af­ter drop­ping off an em­ploy­ee. Re­ports said he was am­bushed by the men, who were hid­ing be­hind an ice-freez­er on the west­ern side of the gat­ed com­pound when Zhu Zang re­turned around 10.20 pm.

Zhu Zang’s killing has led to more calls from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for eas­i­er ac­cess to Firearm User’s Li­cences (FULS).

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed of­fered con­do­lences to Ali’s fam­i­ly at the scene of the in­ci­dent.

“The cir­cum­stances and de­tails of his mur­der are un­known, but what is known is an­oth­er cit­i­zen was mur­dered by the use of an il­le­gal firearm. Chil­dren are now fa­ther­less be­cause of the use of il­le­gal firearms. There are just too many guns on the streets. To­day in Trinidad and To­ba­go, if some­one wants you dead, it seems as though there’s noth­ing or no one to stop them. You have to take every threat se­ri­ous­ly. To­day, every cit­i­zen fears for safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty”.

He added, “This takes away their peace of mind. This takes away their abil­i­ty to en­joy their life and their liveli­hood. We see an in­crease in home in­va­sions and an in­crease in rob­bery. Busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens are un­der at­tack every sin­gle day in this coun­try.

“We are all liv­ing in fear. Trinidad and To­ba­go seems to be a place where crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is dri­ving. Why? Why? Sim­ple an­swer be­cause our Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is fail­ing. How much longer can we op­er­ate like this? I know for sure it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al. ... In­no­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are be­ing ter­rorised every day. It is time for some ac­tion. If not, it is time for the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to go.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the crime sit­u­a­tion, busi­ness­man Gary Aboud said, “We are liv­ing in a state of civ­il war! There are more ca­su­al­ties with mur­ders, home in­va­sions and bru­tal­i­sa­tion of the vul­ner­a­ble and in­no­cent than ever be­fore. In­stead of a log­i­cal ac­tion plan, we suf­fer from a Gov­ern­ment that is un­ac­count­able, that does not con­sult and that plays a “mer­ry-go-round blame game,” while every home and busi­ness is paral­ysed with fear.” He added, “Un­like Cab­i­net, we don’t have armed guards post­ed on our com­pound or armed chauf­feurs or armed po­lice es­corts. All of us are lit­er­al­ly liv­ing in anx­i­ety while suit­ed in­com­pe­tents use crit­i­cal po­lice re­sources to wreck cars off city shop­pers. Our po­lice com­mis­sion­er say­ing, ‘God has to help us solve the crime’ is like a drug deal­er ask­ing the Almighty to send cus­tomers. And then even with pub­lic out­rage … no pub­lic apol­o­gy … no ex­pla­na­tion … no with­draw­al or re­trac­tion. Medi­oc­rity and blunt ar­ro­gance will not res­cue us from this civ­il war!”

Min­istry work­er killed out­side home

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, Bri­an Ben­nett was shot dead while so­cial­is­ing with a friend at his home on Sug­ars Lane, off Blake Av­enue Ex­ten­sion, Damarie Hill, Guaico.

Po­lice re­port­ed around 8.10 pm on Tues­day, Ben­nett, a labour­er at the Min­istry of Works De­part­ment in San­gre Grande, was lim­ing with an­oth­er man when he went out­side.

The man in­side heard ex­plo­sions and ran away and hid. When the shots died the man called the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion.

Sgt Leon, PC Cabralis and a par­ty of CID of­fi­cers re­spond­ed.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Kr­ish­na Chan­dolu or­dered the body re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, for a post-mortem.

Vis­it­ing the scene were act­ing In­sps Kistow and Sylvester, Sgt Ed­wards and of­fi­cers from Homi­cide Re­gion 2. (With re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton & Ralph Ban­warie)