Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Reporter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ger­ard Forde may have been for­tu­nate to es­cape gun­men, but his el­dest son was not.

Forde’s son, Bran­don Forde, 26, was one of four men who were killed while lim­ing at the cor­ner of Smart Place and Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road, at around 10.22 pm on Sun­day when a dark-coloured SUV drove near them.

Five gun­men got out of the car and shot the friends sev­er­al times be­fore dri­ving off.

The friends, Bri­an Pad­more, 27, Chivon Clarke, 26 and Ker­ron Moore, 31, died at the scene.

Of­fi­cers of the Bel­mont CID, the Port-of-Spain Task Force and the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion I vis­it­ed the scene and found sev­er­al spent shells.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene as res­i­dents at the cor­ner tried to scrub away blood­stains from the pave­ment where the men were killed.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with the el­der Forde who said he was stand­ing near the cor­ner where his son and friends were lim­ing.

His last in­ter­ac­tion with his son was a quick greet­ing be­fore the shoot­ing be­gan.

Forde said he ini­tial­ly could not be­lieve what was hap­pen­ing and was too stunned to move.

“That gun, that noise, it was so pow­er­ful I froze.

I ac­tu­al­ly froze on that bridge and I was walk­ing across here be­cause I thought I was go­ing to die.

I kind of ran and hid be­hind this car and I kept look­ing back and I said to my­self, ‘some­body is go­ing to kill me.’”

An emo­tion­al Forde said the sound of the gun­fire left him shak­en and could not think of a rea­son why his son and friends were tar­get­ed by killers.

He said his son bought a few cars and had them work­ing as taxis on the road and was speak­ing about car re­pairs with his friends, who he de­scribed as be­ing “in­no­cent” men.

He lament­ed how un­pre­dictable such at­tacks could be, not­ing that while he knew his son was not in­volved in any­thing il­le­gal, he warned him about the dan­ger of stray bul­lets.

“I used to say the type of peo­ple you lime with, you have to be care­ful be­cause even though he limes with peo­ple I don’t know who they as­so­ciate with.

He would lis­ten but he won’t do any­thing about it, he will still stay with his friends.”

Re­fer­ring to the cal­i­bre of weapons used in the at­tack, the el­der Forde ques­tioned how such high-pow­ered ri­fles were eas­i­ly avail­able.

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the re­sponse of the au­thor­i­ties in re­spond­ing to the threat of crim­i­nals.

“And they said it (the crime) is get­ting bet­ter but where are they get­ting the weapons from and where are they get­ting all these bul­lets from?

They (the crim­i­nals) are get­ting all of these weapons, they have to be im­port­ed and noth­ing is be­ing done.”

Forde said his son had dreams of open­ing his own busi­ness and lament­ed that he did not get the chance to have any chil­dren.

While at the scene sev­er­al passers-by stopped to of­fer Forde and his fam­i­ly con­do­lences, while dri­vers trav­el­ling along Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road briefly slowed down at the cor­ner to see the area where the men were killed.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, and spoke with rel­a­tives of Bri­an Pad­more who said they al­so did not know him to be in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

One rel­a­tive said Pad­more worked as a se­cu­ri­ty guard at West­mall.

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said he lived close enough to the area where Pad­more was mur­dered and heard the vol­ley of gun­fire from his home.

“I didn’t re­al­ly take it on when I heard the gun­shots.

It’s when I got a call from a friend he said, ‘Boy look they kill your Bri­an boy,’ I said ‘Kill Bri­an?’

I got over the wall one time.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, via What­sApp DCP in charge of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Curt Si­mon of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the mur­dered men.

He said “sig­nif­i­cant leads” were de­vel­oped and are be­ing pur­sued in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In his re­sponse, Si­mon said the mur­der of Nester Sam­my hours ear­li­er in Diego Mar­tin was un­re­lat­ed.

Si­mon not­ed that while the Bel­mont mur­ders were sad­den­ing, the po­lice were ini­ti­at­ing sev­er­al crime-fight­ing mea­sures and called on the pub­lic to part­ner with the au­thor­i­ties.

“I wish to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask my fel­low cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to part­ner with us, as you have seen re­cent­ly some re­sults of our part­ner­ship. To­geth­er our ef­forts have stymied the mur­der toll. I say to you, be coura­geous and do not lose hope in your TTPS.

We have not giv­en up.”

As of Mon­day morn­ing there were 477 mur­ders for the year com­pared to 508 for the same pe­ri­od last year.