Shak­en af­ter hearing gun­shots ring­ing out as she drove along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way (CRH) in Pi­ar­co on Mon­day, Carls­bury Lewis’ niece passed the crime scene, un­aware that it was her un­cle be­ing gunned down.

On her way home, she heard the ra­dio re­ports about the in­ci­dent but it was when she got home and re­ceived the call that Lewis had been one of the vic­tims that it reg­is­tered with her that their fam­i­ly had lost a loved one to gang war­fare.

Lewis, 51, of Mo­hammed Street, St Au­gus­tine, died around 8.15 pm on Mon­day, af­ter gun­men opened fire on his car as he was dri­ving along the west­bound lane of the CRH in the vicin­i­ty of Pi­ar­co Plaza.

The pas­sen­ger in Lewis’ car, iden­ti­fied as Sham­ba Chan­dler of Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph, al­so died at the scene.

Carlsbury Lewis of Mohammed Street, St Augustine.

The car lat­er crashed in­to a met­al bar­ri­er along the shoul­der of the CRH just be­fore the Orop­une Gar­dens De­vel­op­ment, as the gun­men turned south along Pi­ar­co Boule­vard.

On­look­ers claimed Lewis’ car had been rid­dled with bul­lets which were lodged in the front wind­screen, bon­net, both front doors and the back door on the right side.

Mean­while, a 33-year-old San­gre Grande man who was al­so dri­ving west sus­tained dam­age to the left rear door of his Grey Suzu­ki Baleno dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

As he heard the shoot­ing and re­alised his ve­hi­cle had been shot at, the dri­ver re­port­ed­ly pulled on­to the shoul­der, ex­it­ed, and took cov­er un­til a High­way Pa­trol Unit se­cured the scene.

Foren­sic of­fi­cers re­trieved sev­en 7.62 mm shell cas­ings; 11 5.56 mm shell cas­ings; and 12 9 mm shell cas­ings at the scene.

Still stunned yes­ter­day as they iden­ti­fied Lewis’ body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, rel­a­tives de­scribed the fa­ther of three girls, aged 31, 28, and 14, as a “hus­tler”.

Shamba Chandler of Mt D’Or Road and Maracas/St Joseph.

They said Lewis, who had been em­ployed with the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as a truck dri­ver, was some­times known for tak­ing on pri­vate-hire jobs dur­ing his spare time as he worked hard to pro­vide for his girls. The fam­i­ly ad­mit­ted they had not met Chan­dler be­fore.

A fe­male rel­a­tive re­called, “He was a jol­ly per­son.”

She smiled broad­ly as she re­vealed, “He was al­ways on chupid­ness...clown­ing and per­form­ing the fool.”

Fond­ly re­ferred to as Berry, she said he would re­spond to monikers such as, “Red­man, Berry, any­thing you can think of with Berry in it they called him.”

Lewis’ fam­i­ly said he was a drinker who loved life.

One of the women said they would miss his af­fec­tion and love for the fam­i­ly.

“He would al­ways pass in and check up on you, and say he would check ya to­mor­row. He was al­ways on the go, al­ways busy do­ing some kind of work. He’s al­ways hus­tling. He would pick up scrap iron and sell and all kind of thing be­cause he still had his last daugh­ter to see about.”

In­sist­ing Lewis had been a good fa­ther and that his kids could at­test to this fact, she added, “They are do­ing well for now. The lit­tle one can’t cry no more.”

Sad­dened by the killing as Lewis had been head­ing home af­ter stop­ping in to check on the ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly in D’Abadie, the rel­a­tive said the crime sit­u­a­tion was, “Over­bear­ing right now.”

She sought to ra­tio­nalise it, “My take on this is like the songs that they play...when you lis­ten to the songs, they tell you how a crim­i­nal thinks and it’s re­al­ly ap­palling and dis­gust­ing be­cause when you lose a fam­i­ly mem­ber to vi­o­lence, it’s just not a nor­mal death. They tak­ing a loved one, but they don’t care who is what and what is what.”

She was care­ful not to ap­por­tion blame. “We can’t blame the Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly. But at the same time, who do we blame?”

Echo­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s call for the na­tion to pray for a god­ly in­ter­ven­tion along­side crime-fight­ing strate­gies em­ployed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Lewis’ rel­a­tives added, “This coun­try needs to pray, open our hearts and pray to get this crime curbed be­cause it is ridicu­lous­ly over­bear­ing.

“I nev­er thought I would be in­ter­viewed for some­thing like this, and I don’t have words to say ex­act­ly how I am feel­ing. I am ‘feel­in­g­less’, that’s the best way I can put it.”