Sto­ries by An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The mass mur­der of five peo­ple in Laven­tille is be­ing re­gard­ed as a reprisal killing which posed a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, prompt­ing a State of Emer­gency be­ing called.

Yes­ter­day, hours af­ter the vi­o­lent in­ci­dent, Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, re­mained eeri­ly qui­et with de­sert­ed streets and locked gates at every turn.

Even though some doors and win­dows were slight­ly ajar, res­i­dents stayed well away from sight and re­fused to speak, as they warned re­porters to stay out of the area.

Fear and un­cer­tain­ty, as well as sor­row and an­guish, could be seen on the faces of sev­er­al men who re­fused to talk about Sun­day night’s shoot­ing which end­ed the lives of five men in the area.

A sixth was left nurs­ing a gun­shot wound to the up­per left arm af­ter the dust set­tled on De­cem­ber 29, while two oth­ers nar­row­ly es­caped death af­ter re­port­ed­ly lock­ing them­selves in­to an ad­join­ing room.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the five vic­tims as Ryan Lessey, 23, of Priz­gar Lands; Der­ron Cal­liste, 35, of Priz­gar Lands; Cleon Lu­g­in, 37, of Priz­gar Lands; Kam­bon Omowale, 39, of Quintin Trace, Priz­gar Lands; and Gareth Smart, of Thoma­sine Street, Laven­tille.

A 32-year-old man, al­so from Priz­gar Lands, who was in­jured dur­ing the shoot­ing, was treat­ed and dis­charged.

Po­lice said Lessey died at the scene, while the re­main­ing vic­tims were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Sun­day night.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the six were am­bushed by three armed men at 8.30 pm whilst lim­ing at St John Shop, which is sit­u­at­ed along Priz­gar Lands Cir­cu­lar.

Po­lice said a blue Elantra and a white Nis­san AD wag­on stopped in front of the shop and the gun­men en­tered and opened fire on the oc­cu­pants, who had been gath­ered in a room to the back.

It was be­lieved they were af­ter Lessey, and the re­main­ing vic­tims were as one fam­i­ly yes­ter­day de­scribed, “just col­lat­er­al dam­age.”

Rel­a­tives of Omowale yes­ter­day plead­ed for the tragedy to be a “one and done,” as they called for peo­ple not to seek re­venge or to spark any reprisal killings as a re­sult.

This was echoed by oth­er res­i­dents of the Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty, who said, “Right now, they say­ing down to the dogs and all in Priz­gar Lands they want to deal with, so we just stay­ing qui­et and hum­ble.”

Speak­ing with re­porters at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, Omowale’s rel­a­tives wept as they said he was a hard-work­ing fa­ther of two chil­dren aged 16 and two.

Omowale, who has lived in the area his en­tire life, had been em­ployed with the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and al­so op­er­at­ed a small busi­ness.

Asked if the vic­tims had been ac­cus­tomed to lim­ing at the shop where they were killed, one woman said, “That was his friend’s busi­ness and he nor­mal­ly goes out the road to sup­port. They were just lim­ing nor­mal, which is what they were ac­cus­tomed do­ing.”

An­oth­er rel­a­tive fought back tears as she said, “Our area is not known for hav­ing any sort of gun vi­o­lence or any­thing like that. Priz­gar Lands has been very qui­et for a long time, so this is a huge shock.”

A rel­a­tive said on­ly one of the men in the group was the tar­get of the gun­men.

“He was known to the po­lice and it seems like they came for him and they were just there...they were just col­lat­er­al dam­age.”

The Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage was named af­ter Omowale’s fa­ther, Lidj Ya­su Pi­ankhi Omowale, who died in 1996.

The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, with Lidj Ya­su Omowale and Khafra Kam­bon as co-chairs, was formed as an um­brel­la body to strength­en the Eman­ci­pa­tion Cel­e­bra­tions back in 1992.

Kam­bon Omowale was the last of ten chil­dren and was de­scribed as the “ba­by.”

Re­veal­ing he was a qui­et per­son who nev­er spoke much, one of his rel­a­tives said, “He was not known to the po­lice ... he was not in­volved in any­thing.

“I hope the po­lice deal with what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion and there is no reprisal shoot­ing and no­body don’t take it up­on them­selves to seek jus­tice on any­one’s be­half.

“We are alive and still have to live in the com­mu­ni­ty and we re­al­ly don’t want any sort of vi­o­lence to take place in the com­mu­ni­ty. We just leav­ing it in the po­lice and God’s hands. I don’t want no­body to end no­body life on be­half of me. I don’t want it.”

Po­lice sources sus­pect the mass mur­der was a re­venge at­tack af­ter the mur­der of 34-year-old Trevor Williams out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Williams was not the tar­get. He was ac­com­pa­ny­ing Calvin Lee, al­so known as “Tyson” or “6 Dan,” who had gone to the sta­tion to sign the bail book. Lee, who had been charged in Jan­u­ary this year with firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences, sur­vived the at­tack.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials iden­ti­fied Lee as a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er due to his sus­pect­ed in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the ru­mours that the killing of the five men, cou­pled with a killing out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day, had sparked the SoE, Omowale’s rel­a­tives said they were aware of what was be­ing said.

De­spite this, they said, “That won’t bring him back. As a fam­i­ly, we still have to bury him, we still have to deal with it years af­ter.”

A man, who is a rel­a­tive of Lessey said, “The youths of to­day, in that age group ... they not easy, they not re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to any­body, they get­ting in­flu­enced by oth­ers, do­ing their own thing. You can’t talk to them.”

Asked if Lessey was one of these youths, the rel­a­tive ad­mit­ted, “He’s not no saint yuh know.”

He said the vic­tims were hard-work­ing peo­ple who were just look­ing to take care of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies and hap­pened to be in the same place as Lessey.

Mur­ders con­tin­ue in Va­len­cia

And in a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent on Sun­day night at San Pablo Road, Va­len­cia, one man was killed and an­oth­er in­jured af­ter a gun­man opened fire on their car.

Po­lice said Hyson Ju­nior James alias Bones, 23, of George Street, San Souci, was shot mul­ti­ple times and died at the scene, while a 21-year-old man of San Pablo Road, Va­len­cia, was in­jured.

Of­fi­cers said the two were dri­ving out of San Pablo Road around 9.55 pm on De­cem­ber 29, when up­on reach­ing Rus­tona Trace a man emerged from be­hind a co­conut tree and opened fire on their car.

The in­jured man re­port­ed­ly ran to a rel­a­tive’s house which was close by, leav­ing James alone.

In the last few weeks, there have been two dead­ly shoot­ings in Va­len­cia.