Anna-Lisa Paul
Although La Retreat and the Heights of Guanapo are considered sister communities in Arima, the continued bloodshed due to one man’s alleged fight for power and control is threatening to rip them apart.
Helpless and hopeless, residents in both areas yesterday said there was no end in sight to the killings that occur almost daily.
Those who could afford to flee their homes have done so, with one man claiming to have spent close to $1 million to safely relocate his family.
Those who are unable to make ends meet struggle to survive, and they live in constant fear, believing that death stalks them constantly.
Speaking out yesterday for the first time since the killing of his relative Jamiela Cumberbatch on Monday, the man, who is reportedly being hunted openly, cried as he told Guardian Media, “I am not afraid to die.”
But his heart aches for the innocent ones whom he says are being killed in a bid to flush him out of hiding.
Two gunmen shot Cumberbatch, 28, multiple times as she returned to her home at Dump Road, La Retreat Extension, Arima, around 12.05 am on Monday.
Residents said contrary to reports that she had just returned from work, she had returned from the wake of her uncle Eyon Murray, who was killed on July 24 at Dump Road.
Cumberbatch reportedly shielded her one-year-old daughter during the attack. One of the men who helped lift Cumberbatch’s bloody body from atop her daughter after the attack, said the caring and loving mother had given her last breath to keep the child safe from harm.
Denying he was involved in gang warfare or responsible for the recent spate of gun violence in the area, the man, who requested his name not be disclosed, said, “Is innocent people they killing.”
Appealing to residents in both areas to take a stand against what he said was the fight for turf, he said women and children were not being spared by the “oppressor” (name called).
The man, who was released from prison just over a year ago, said he had deliberately cut ties with his relatives in order to keep them safe, and as a result, he had not spoken to Cumberbatch since. He said this hurt but was necessary to ensure their safety. Despite this, Cumberbatch ended up paying the price with her life, he said.
He is, however, thankful her daughter is alive.
He reiterated, “All I am calling on the community to do is to stand up against these people.”
He urged, “It have different ways to stand up against them. It have the system where people could call the police. Everybody have their own way of dealing with things.”
While he does not intend to make himself an easy target for the man he believes wants him dead, he said it was the families and residents who were caught in the middle that were feeling the effects of the gun and gang warfare in the Arima area now.
He acknowledged, “Everybody grieving, everybody feeling pain cause is only people family these people killing.”
“If these things continually going on, what else you leaving for people to do again?”
“Ent you have to defend yourself?” he asked.
He claimed, “At the end of the day, if you turn to the police, nothing not getting done because they don’t have the necessary resources to deal with this.”
The men nearby agreed there were rogue elements in the T&T Police Service whom they alleged were responsible for “setting them up and putting them in place.”
One said, “As soon as they drive and go down the road, somebody dead.”
Cumberbatch’s relative recalled when the Guanapo Dump Road was “a nice and loving place when people coulda come and take in all the nice sights like waterfalls, rivers. We have nice places in the mountain where people coulda go and hike, all these things, but all these activities that men causing in the place is making the place worse. People moving out, people don’t even wanna come.”
He said another effect of the crime situation was that the value of land at Guanapo had been steadily depreciating.
“Imagine people had land in the Dump Road which used to have value, and now land don’t even have a value again because nobody don’t want to buy nothing and come up here to die.”
Roland Joseph endorsed these sentiments, as he too said, “This what going on up here in the area, hadda stop. One man making problem for everybody.”
He said residents were being forced to pay tax, while bounties were being placed on the heads of others. Joseph said the Muslim community at Guanapo was being wrongfully blamed for the violence and killings.
As Cumberbatch’s family on the other side of the mountain at La Retreat Extension hosted a wake for her on Monday night, close to 50 Muslims engaged in a peace walk. They were detained by police and searched but nothing illegal was found.