JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Death threats for Colleen

by

Rhondor Dowlat-Rostant
2093 days ago
20190711
Oropune Gardens residents Collen Holder left and Angelo Ferdinand  at speaks to residents on Saturday.

Oropune Gardens residents Collen Holder left and Angelo Ferdinand at speaks to residents on Saturday.

Nicole Drayton

One week af­ter she be­came vo­cal on the many se­ri­ous is­sues and con­cerns in­clud­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in the Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co area the life of a for­mer news an­chor Colleen Hold­er has been threat­ened.

Hold­er re­ceived cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion on Thurs­day morn­ing that there is now a 'hit' on her life.

The death threat al­so came one day af­ter of­fi­cials from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) un­der the watch­ful eyes of the po­lice moved in­to the area and de­mol­ished il­le­gal struc­tures erect­ed by busi­ness­man An­tho­ny Knights al­so known as One Foot out­side and op­po­site to his apart­ment at Build­ing 3A.

Knights op­er­at­ed a hard­ware and com­mer­cial shop.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, Hold­er said she re­ceived the threat­en­ing call about 9 am.

"The on­ly in­for­ma­tion I got from my source was "green light" or "green lit"...shoot and burn, " Hold­er said.

Hav­ing al­ready spoke to the po­lice, Hold­er said she is yet to lodge a for­mal re­port in the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion.

She said she al­so in­tends to write com­pre­hen­sive let­ters to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Hold­er, how­ev­er, not­ed that she is not scared nei­ther does she have any re­grets for be­ing vo­cal on the is­sues.

"I'm not scared. I have no re­grets. Un­for­tu­nate­ly though I un­der­stand now why peo­ple stay silent when they live in a sit­u­a­tion where they feel like they cant speak out for fear of be­ing tar­get­ed," Hold­er said.

Asked if she is con­sid­er­ing mov­ing out of the area, she replied: "I dont want to move. My next move us to just live my life. I have re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls of sup­port from peo­ple of all walks of life as well as the com­mu­ni­ty."

She said she strong­ly be­lieves that it is not just her fight, "It's a com­mu­ni­ty try­ing to re­gain its peace­ful foot­ing be­fore it's too late."

Hold­er was al­so a vic­tim of crime where she was robbed twice - her car was stolen from her at gun­point out­side her home last year, and one month lat­er her house was bro­ken in­to.

Hold­er raised se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty is­sues fol­low­ing last week Thurs­day night's mur­der which oc­curred at about 9.38 pm where a man was gunned down out­side Build­ing 4A. He was iden­ti­fied as Calvin Carl­ton Strak­er, 27, of Orop­une Gar­dens and Sama­roo Vil­lage in Ari­ma.

This was the sec­ond mur­der in one month. On June 4, Kadeem Young, 19, aka "Smeagol" and DJ Kid­do was shot dead out­side that said build­ing at about 9.15 pm.

Hold­er said its res­i­dents are up in arms over the sud­den in­crease in gun vi­o­lence in the area and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties and called for an im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion by HDC of­fi­cials and the po­lice.

Hold­er said their com­mu­ni­ty what­sapp chat has been "light­ing up with res­i­dents ex­press­ing their fear, frus­tra­tion, ir­ri­ta­tion, anger at this sit­u­a­tion that seems to be spi­ralling out of con­trol."

She al­so said that in the last few weeks they hear gun­shots from "a sim­i­lar high pow­ered weapon ring­ing out on al­most a dai­ly ba­sis."

Hold­er said HDC needs to en­force the rules and start evict­ing per­sons who are flout­ing the rules, evict per­sons who are op­er­at­ing busi­ness­es il­le­gal­ly, evict per­sons who are il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing apart­ments, evict per­sons who are har­bour­ing crim­i­nals. She al­so called on HDC to work with the po­lice, work with res­i­dents to make the com­mu­ni­ty safe.

Fol­low­ing her pub­lic out­cry, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ad­mit­ted that there are sev­er­al is­sues at play but added that it re­quire a mul­ti-pronged and mul­ti-agency ap­proach for res­o­lu­tion.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Hold­er last week, in a state­ment is­sued by the HDC, it as­sured that the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of res­i­dents in all HDC com­mu­ni­ties are is­sues which the Cor­po­ra­tion gives se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion.

"As such, the HDC, has de­vel­oped and main­tained a pos­i­tive work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the pro­tec­tive ser­vices such as TT Po­lice Ser­vice and TT De­fence Force, the en­ti­ties re­spon­si­ble for the main­te­nance of law and or­der in the coun­try, " the re­lease stat­ed.

"Those which are with­in the con­trol and re­mit of the HDC, such as the pro­vi­sion of Cer­tifi­cates of Char­ac­ter be­fore the al­lo­ca­tion of any res­i­dents and the evic­tion of il­le­gal oc­cu­pants in tan­dem with the TTPS are on-go­ing. How­ev­er, the HDC can­not be held sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all of Orop­une Gar­dens’ is­sues. The TTPS re­mains the sole en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty," it added.

Over at the HDC's Clifton Tow­ers in east Port of Spain, af­ter years of pub­lic out­cry from le­gal ten­ants po­lice iden­ti­fied four apart­ments in three of the four tow­ers to be oc­cu­pied by gang lead­ers and fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The apart­ments – one at Tow­er 1; one at Tow­er 3 and two at Tow­er 4, were iden­ti­fied in a let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 3, 2018. It was ad­dressed to the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Ed­mund Dil­lon and sent by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer as­signed to the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion’s Besson Street Sta­tion Coun­cil.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, the po­lice re­quest­ed Dil­lon’s as­sis­tance on be­half of the ten­ants at Clifton Tow­ers who lodged sev­er­al re­ports that a gang leader, his fam­i­ly mem­bers and gang mem­bers were il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing units at their com­plex.

The let­ter al­so in­di­cat­ed that the res­i­dents are afraid of be­ing shot and asked for an in­ter­ven­tion to have the il­le­gal oc­cu­pants per­ma­nent­ly re­moved.

At­tached to the let­ter the Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands was a cor­re­spon­dence per­tain­ing to pre­vi­ous com­plaints from res­i­dents.

The po­lice al­so not­ed that it was rec­om­mend­ed to em­ploy a Hous­ing Po­lice Unit for Clifton Tow­ers and sub­se­quent­ly all HDC hous­ing com­plex­es.

In Feb­ru­ary this year, ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty con­cerns resur­faced amongst ten­ants at the tow­ers as they claim oc­cu­pan­cy of an apart­ment by some­one well known to them to be al­leged­ly in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ties. They de­scribed the oc­cu­pant as a “gang­ster boss.”

Ten­ants al­so claimed that drug ad­dicts al­so fre­quent the com­pound and can be a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty risk to them and their chil­dren.

On Feb­ru­ary 28, po­lice of­fi­cers were called to the com­pound where one of the ten­ant's ve­hi­cle was ma­li­cious­ly van­dal­ized al­leged­ly by one of the il­le­gal oc­cu­pants.

In De­cem­ber 2017 ten­ants called on HDC for per­ma­nent se­cu­ri­ty in and around the com­pound claim­ing them that they live in con­stant fear of bul­ly­ing and reprisal at­tacks by gang mem­bers af­ter the HDC moved to evict il­le­gal ten­ants from the site.

For­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell con­firmed to the Par­lia­ment then that po­lice and De­fence Force mem­bers had evict­ed 15 il­le­gal ten­ants on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions from the four-tow­er de­vel­op­ment, fol­low­ing com­plaints of un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty and il­le­gal apart­ment oc­cu­pa­tion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored