The daugh­ter of the woman who was killed when gun­men went on a ram­page in Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 31 wants the mem­bers of war­ring gangs to give them­selves to God.

Kin­nisha Pat­ter­son, 20, spoke to Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, as she wait­ed for the re­sults of her moth­er, Lystra Her­nan­dez-Pat­ter­son’s, au­top­sy.

Her­nadez-Pat­ter­son was one of ten peo­ple in­jured when four gun­men opened fire with au­to­mat­ic as­sault ri­fles on Old Year’s Day.

Yes­ter­day, Kin­nisha said her fam­i­ly was told the in­tend­ed tar­get of the gun­men tried to hide in the maxi, loaded with pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing her moth­er, which was head­ing to Blan­chisseuse on the cor­ner of Prince and George streets. The area is said to be in the heart of “Mus­lim” gang ter­ri­to­ry.

Three of the four gun­men, said to be mem­bers of the Ras­ta City gang, were killed in a shootout with po­lice that evening.

A fourth gun­man es­caped in­to Sea Lots.

“When we went to see her (at the hos­pi­tal), he was there in a wheel­chair, he was good. He ran in­to the maxi to es­cape the gun­men and my moth­er lost her life,” Kin­nisha said.

“My on­ly hope is that you give your life to God, you got a sec­ond chance at life and it was like oth­er peo­ple were sac­ri­ficed for your chance.”

She urged any­one in­volved with the two war­ring gangs to see how sense­less their war is.

“It could have been your moth­er, grand­moth­er or sis­ter and it doesn’t make sense…. the re­al Ras­tas and Mus­lims know about love, not this pet­ti­ness that go­ing on, I have Rasta­far­i­an fam­i­ly, Rasta­far­i­an­ism is about pure love and hum­ble­ness, not much foul words come out of a Rasta­far­i­an mouth, every­thing is about pos­i­tiv­i­ty,” Kin­nisha said. “If that is the life you want to be in, get in­to the re­al re­li­gion, the re­al faith, and learn about peace, har­mo­ny and uni­ty.”

The youngest of Her­nan­dez-Pat­ter­son’s chil­dren, Kin­nisha said she and her moth­er were very close. She de­scribed Her­nan­dez-Pat­ter­son as hard-work­ing, lov­ing and easy­go­ing.

“Her heart was lit­er­al­ly made of gold, she was al­ways for­giv­ing and would en­cour­age me to for­give peo­ple, we went through so much and she was al­ways the one to be strong for every­body. We lost the glue that holds our fam­i­ly to­geth­er so it is hard with­out her be­ing around.”

She said her moth­er was in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day to buy pro­duce for her busi­ness.

“We have a small food busi­ness, all of her mar­ket goods re­mained in the maxi when she was shot. Her dream was to com­plete our food shop and move the busi­ness in­to it,” she said.