Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A neigh­bour and friend of slain ma­chine op­er­a­tor Ron­dell Adol­phus, alias ‘Patch’, says he is fear­ful for his own safe­ty, as he is con­cerned that em­ploy­ees of mur­dered busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra are be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

Guer­ra, 48, was mur­dered on March 13, near his Guy Trace, San­gre Grande busi­ness­place, while Adol­phus, 34, was am­bushed and killed on Mon­day night out­side his cab­in at a Matu­ra re­sort.

Po­lice said Adol­phus left the cab­in to get ice when he was gunned down.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found ten spent 223 shell cas­ings and five spent 9 mm shells at the scene.

Adol­phus worked as a ma­chine op­er­a­tor with Guer­ra’s com­pa­ny, DG Homes.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Adol­phus’ Im­mortelle Cres­cent Road Three home yes­ter­day but no one was at home.

One man who iden­ti­fied him­self as a neigh­bour and close friend of Adol­phus said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly sad­dened by the news of his mur­der, not­ing that he brought him to work with Guer­ra and taught him the ba­sics of heavy ma­chine op­er­at­ing.

Not­ing that he al­so worked with Guer­ra’s com­pa­ny, the man said he too was con­cerned for his safe­ty, cit­ing the mur­ders of his boss and his co-work­er just over a week apart.

“Yeah, I feel­ing un­safe... be­cause every day for two to three years I was with Patch every sin­gle day work­ing with him.

“I built that bond with him; he got me em­ployed since I left school. The whole of Grande not feel­ing okay, we knew the type of per­son he was, and he was nev­er in­volved in any bad­ness.”

The co-work­er, who asked not to be named, al­so dis­missed claims that Guer­ra was in­volved in crim­i­nal­i­ty, de­spite be­ing told of a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) is­sued for him in 2025 for be­ing the leader of an Or­gan­ised Crime Group (OCG) in­volved in traf­fick­ing il­le­gal arms, mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

“I knew these fel­las, they made sure and put bread on plen­ty peo­ple ta­ble, so all these things about he fund­ing this gang and fund­ing that gang, it’s just al­le­ga­tions from the gov­ern­ment.”

Po­lice said Adol­phus’ mur­der was clas­si­fied as be­ing gang-re­lat­ed and strong­ly sus­pect that both mur­ders were re­lat­ed, but not­ed it was too ear­ly in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to com­mit to this the­o­ry, as such a link would have to be proven be­yond a rea­son­able doubt.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter of De­fence and To­co/ San­gre Grande MP Wayne Sturge for com­ment on the lat­est mur­der in his con­stituen­cy, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to news time.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­quiries.