In a bid to pre­vent fur­ther blood­shed in the St Au­gus­tine com­mu­ni­ty, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer has giv­en the as­sur­ance that di­rect in­ter­ven­tion will be un­der­tak­en with­in the com­ing days as they move to sub­due gang and drug ac­tiv­i­ties.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) of the North/East area Wayne Mys­tar con­firmed that the gang ac­tiv­i­ties were as a re­sult of moves by crim­i­nals to con­trol drug turf.

From Jan­u­ary 24 to April 4, there were five mur­ders in the dis­trict, which led to three homes be­ing set on fire, res­i­dents flee­ing their prop­er­ties, vil­lagers liv­ing in fear, hits be­ing or­dered and two men miss­ing.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mys­tar said the com­mu­ni­ty is ex­pect­ed to see a di­rect in­ter­ven­tion from his of­fi­cers to­geth­er with oth­er stake­hold­ers.

“Based on our in­tel we can con­firm that it’s gang ac­tiv­i­ties with a view of con­trol­ling drug turf. I can as­sure the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens in that com­mu­ni­ty that we will mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress their con­cerns,” Mys­tar said..

A res­i­dent, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty this week, said pre­vi­ous­ly, their com­mu­ni­ty was free of gun vi­o­lence and mur­ders.

“It nev­er had so many killings in back here,” he said, stat­ing that their com­mu­ni­ty has been turned in­to a war zone over drugs.

All that changed, the res­i­dent said, when a drug lord and his fam­i­ly moved out of the squat­ting set­tle­ment in Bangladesh, in St Joseph, a few years ago and re­lo­cat­ed to the squat­ting site com­mon­ly re­ferred to as the Train Line, in St Au­gus­tine.

There were fur­ther claims that this fam­i­ly be­gan op­er­at­ing their drug busi­ness, which it is be­lieved has led to this cur­rent may­hem and blood­shed.

“Cer­tain res­i­dents start­ed to kick against the drug be­ing sold in their com­mu­ni­ty,” one res­i­dent told the Guardian Me­dia dur­ing an in­ter­view.

She ex­plained that Mukesh Pooran, al­so called Trim, was one of the res­i­dents who ob­ject­ed to the il­le­gal op­er­a­tions when it be­gan af­fect­ing his drug sales in 2017.

Pooran was am­bushed and gunned down while rid­ing a bi­cy­cle on Free­man Road.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said, “It was a paid hit. Mukesh got killed be­cause he start­ed ad­ver­tis­ing mar­i­jua­na joints un­der the slo­gan $20 for plen­ty to his clients and was cut­ting up the drug lord’s busi­ness.”

Pooran’s killing was meant to send a mes­sage to the com­mu­ni­ty.

The res­i­dents claimed things be­gan es­ca­lat­ing in Jan­u­ary with the killing of 16-year-old Dar­shan Ram­nauth, a stu­dent of St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School, and Gi­no Shah.

The two were gunned down on Jan­u­ary 24 at Warn­er Street by four gun­men.

“Dar­shan was not in­volved in any­thing. He did not like what was go­ing on in the dis­trict,” one res­i­dent said.

That dou­ble mur­der re­port­ed­ly rocked the com­mu­ni­ty.

In ear­ly March, res­i­dents were thrown in­to fur­ther pan­ic af­ter masked gun­men en­tered Aneesa Ramkissoon’s home at Train Line and killed her in front of her three chil­dren—in­clud­ing a one-month-old ba­by.

Rel­a­tives of Ramkissoon, 26, be­lieved that she was killed af­ter re­fus­ing to pay a tax by those very gangs.

At the time of her death, Ramkisson was in the process of con­struct­ing her home and al­so op­er­at­ed a mod­est par­lour.

In 2019, Ramkissoon ap­peared on Ian Al­leyne’s Crime Watch pro­gramme and ad­mit­ted to sell­ing drugs.

One of the res­i­dents said Ramkissoon was in­volved in the drug world and paid a price with her life.

“Aneesa was the head of the whole force. With her not be­ing around the drug lord and his men, they start­ed get­ting on bad,” the res­i­dent said.

Fol­low­ing Ram­skissoon’s mur­der, res­i­dents claimed that all hell had bro­ken loose and al­leged that the drug lord had formed an al­liance with the Re­sis­tance gang which op­er­ates out of the Five Rivers, Arou­ca, area to strength­en op­er­a­tions.

The Re­sis­tance Gang com­pris­es mem­bers from Arou­ca, St Joseph and Port-of-Spain dis­tricts.

Re­fer­ring to last Wednes­day’s shoot­ing on Free­man Road that left two men dead and a preg­nant teen fight­ing for her life, res­i­dents mourned the loss of An­jalie Lutch­man’s un­born ba­by.

Daniel Ri­ley, 21, was killed by gun­men on April 4 as he slept in a freight con­tain­er.

Lutch­man, 16, was shot in her stom­ach dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

She cur­rent­ly re­mains hos­pi­talised in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

The oth­er dead man, who re­mained uniden­ti­fied, was one of the gun­men in the am­bush who was killed at the scene by his own gang mem­bers.

It is be­lieved that the uniden­ti­fied man was a mem­ber of the Re­sis­tance Gang.

With­in hours of Ri­ley’s mur­der, his moth­er, He­len Ri­ley, fear­ing for her life, fled the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Oth­er peo­ple have al­so moved out...in­clud­ing the drug lord’s moth­er, aunt and grand­moth­er. That alone will tell you how ter­ri­fy­ing it is. The po­lice know what is go­ing on.”

Be­tween Jan­u­ary to now, three hous­es have al­so been gut­ted by fire.

“The whole sce­nario have res­i­dents liv­ing in fear. No one is feel­ing safe any­more,” one res­i­dent said.

Last week, the home of a fe­male res­i­dent, close to where Ramkissoon lived was set ablaze.

The home of broth­ers Mukesh and “Black Chi­nee” was al­so burnt to the ground.

A few weeks ago, the Ri­leys’ home was al­so de­stroyed.

It was re­cent­ly re­port­ed in the news that Bal­dath Ma­haraj, 26, and Khem­raj Jo­gier­aj, 28 of Col­lege Road, who were de­tained re­cent­ly by the St Joseph Po­lice for ques­tion­ing about a mur­der, have gone miss­ing.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said ru­mours have been cir­cu­lat­ing that the drug had put out hits on the lives of cer­tain Train Line res­i­dents.