Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter se­nior po­lice re­as­sured the pub­lic that they were still in con­trol, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, yes­ter­day, is­sued a stern warn­ing to gang­sters that they will be dealt with.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher made the warn­ing in the af­ter­math of a shoot­ing at Beetham Gar­dens on Thurs­day night and a dou­ble mur­der in east Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing re­spec­tive­ly.

Both in­ci­dents are be­lieved to be the lat­est acts of vi­o­lence in an on­go­ing gang war.

In a voicenote sent to the me­dia yes­ter­day morn­ing, Hare­wood-Christo­pher vowed to con­tin­ue sus­tained po­lice ac­tion against the crim­i­nals.

She promised that the po­lice were firm in their com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the safe­ty of all cit­i­zens.

“The crim­i­nals have made their in­ten­tions clear and so have we (the po­lice), and our mes­sage to them is if you in­tend to be on the wrong side of the law, know that we are com­ing af­ter you.

“The ques­tion is not if but when. We will get you.”

In the voicenote, Hare­wood-Christo­pher point­ed out that po­lice ex­er­cis­es will con­tin­ue through­out the Christ­mas pe­ri­od and in­to Car­ni­val.

Hours be­fore CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s warn­ing, how­ev­er, the blood­shed con­tin­ued in the cap­i­tal.

Po­lice said at 8.10 am at St Paul Street, Shaun­delle Bernard, an em­ploy­ee at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC), stopped to talk with the neigh­bour­hood me­chan­ic, Ja­son Alexan­der, 43, when a black BMW drove up to the men.

Two gun­men got out of the car and shot them sev­er­al times.

Alexan­der died at the scene while Bernard was tak­en to hos­pi­tal where he was de­clared dead short­ly af­ter.

Two men were al­so wound­ed in the at­tack.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors and homi­cide de­tec­tives were still gath­er­ing ev­i­dence and speak­ing with near­by res­i­dents.

One of Bernard’s rel­a­tives in­sist­ed he was not in­volved in any gang ac­tiv­i­ty, adding he was on his way to work when the at­tack be­gan.

“His on­ly in­ter­ests out­side of his work is foot­ball and fix­ing that lit­tle van you see parked there. In fact, he stopped to talk to the me­chan­ic about get­ting a part for the van when the shoot­ing start­ed. He was go­ing to work,” the rel­a­tive, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said.

Po­lice from the Port-of-Spain Task Force, In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Besson Street CID vis­it­ed the scene.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors found 49 spent 5.56 shells at the scene.

Se­nior po­lice, in­clud­ing ACP North-West Win­ston Ma­haraj, ACP Wen­dell Lu­cas and Snr Supt Rishi Singh, of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, al­so vis­it­ed the scene, as the shoot­ing hap­pened with­in walk­ing dis­tance to River­side Plaza and the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, where they had their of­fices.

The black BMW be­lieved to be the get­away car used by the killers was even­tu­al­ly found aban­doned near the Mar­itime Round­about in Barataria.

Sev­er­al videos fea­tur­ing men who ap­peared to be cel­e­brat­ing the mur­ders of Alexan­der and Bernard were cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, as they al­so chal­lenged ri­val gang mem­bers to at­tack them in their neigh­bour­hoods.

A What­sApp sta­tus was al­so shared on so­cial me­dia which sug­gest­ed that Port-of-Spain would not be safe yes­ter­day and claimed the po­lice were in­ca­pable of pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens.

Re­spond­ing to these fears, one po­lice of­fi­cer said that prepa­ra­tions were un­der­way to quell any fur­ther vi­o­lence and was con­fi­dent in the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect cit­i­zens.

“Whether they ac­tu­al­ly launch any re­tal­i­a­tion at­tacks or not, we are pre­pared,” the of­fi­cer said.

“We have mo­bilised a lot of re­sources, in­clud­ing the army, to help as­sist us in in­creas­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty through pa­trols and tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions like search­es in dif­fer­ent ar­eas.”

Pri­or to the dou­ble mur­der, Guardian Me­dia was told that a mi­ni-mart off the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route on the Beetham was shot at by gun­men on Thurs­day night.

How­ev­er, po­lice sources said they were un­aware of the in­ci­dent.

But when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the mi­ni-mart yes­ter­day, a bul­let hole was seen on the front glass pane of the store, while there was some dam­age to two pil­lars at the en­trance way.

One res­i­dent said the in­ci­dent hap­pened on Thurs­day night but not­ed that no po­lice re­ports were made.

No one is be­lieved to have been wound­ed in the at­tack.

Mean­while, one po­lice source said they were work­ing on sev­er­al the­o­ries on what led to the uptick in gang vi­o­lence in and around the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

He said among the the­o­ries were re­ports that a gang mem­ber was beat­en on Ari­api­ta Av­enue ear­ly on Mon­day morn­ing and com­pe­ti­tion for con­struc­tion con­tracts.

The source not­ed that the mur­der of Nester “Pa­pi” Sam­my out­side Su­per­pharm in late Oc­to­ber could have al­so led to the war­fare.