KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness own­ers at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James, are call­ing for height­ened se­cu­ri­ty fol­low­ing a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in the mall’s ground lev­el car park yes­ter­day.

Around mid­day, own­er and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the D’Di­al Fit­ness gym, Michael St John, was shot mul­ti­ple times as he made his way to his parked ve­hi­cle.

Up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion, CCTV footage showed that around 12.22 pm, a gun­man, who was ly­ing in wait in an SUV al­ready parked near the load­ing bay area of the mall, ran out of the ve­hi­cle and opened fire on St John.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, St John was shot in the face. He was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed and ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

The mall is a short dis­tance from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Mount­ed Branch and Ca­nine Unit, the St James Po­lice Bar­racks and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force Camp Og­den in Long Cir­cu­lar.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the mall yes­ter­day, it was busi­ness as usu­al, as it was bustling with cus­tomers. How­ev­er, some ten­ants said they were con­cerned for their safe­ty.

One busi­ness own­er, who asked not to be named, said, “The con­sen­sus right now with most of the ten­ants in the mall is that the mall does not have enough se­cu­ri­ty, and the se­cu­ri­ty that they have does not fit the bill, for lack of a bet­ter word. They need to up their game with re­gards to the se­cu­ri­ty. At least one or two armed se­cu­ri­ty.

“All the se­cu­ri­ty in here have no sort of firearms or ba­tons. They just pa­trol, es­pe­cial­ly in this area (ground floor of the mall), we don’t see much se­cu­ri­ty.”

One em­ploy­ee of a bank lo­cat­ed in the mall said, “The crime sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad is what it is and peo­ple don’t feel safe any­where. Hav­ing it hap­pen here in the mall is clos­er to home but most peo­ple will tell you any­where they are, a crime could hap­pen. It al­most has no safe places any­more.”

A work­er at a su­per­mar­ket al­so lo­cat­ed on the mall’s premis­es said, “I don’t even know how to feel right now. I mean we work here every­day. This is the spot, you see us here, this is where we come out on a break every­day. Nowhere is safe.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­served sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, main­ly fe­male, at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in the car park yes­ter­day. One se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was seen es­cort­ing an el­der­ly busi­ness own­er to her ve­hi­cle, which was parked in the lane ad­ja­cent to where the shoot­ing took place.

De­spite the con­cern of some own­ers and em­ploy­ees, the mall was bustling with shop­ping ac­tiv­i­ty sev­er­al hours af­ter the shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

St John’s gym was al­so open.

And ac­cord­ing to some gym mem­bers, the gym was busy, as is usu­al dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. Some peo­ple said there was some mur­mur of the in­ci­dent but over­all, every­one was ex­er­cis­ing.

Long-stand­ing gym mem­ber Frank Braith­waite said he did not know why any­one would want to harm St John, as he was a “nor­mal” guy who spoke to every­one at the gym.

Braith­waite said, “Yes it’s sad that some­thing like this hap­pened to some­body that we know very close and per­son­al to a cer­tain point, but at the end of the day, the way how things are right now, it is very hard. No­body can be out in peace.”

An­oth­er gym mem­ber, Je­nay Jor­dan, added, “ I’m shocked to hear this news. Wow! When I walked in (the gym), no­body was re­al­ly down or any­thing. The vibe wasn’t a bad vibe but I’m re­al­ly shocked to hear that.”

An­oth­er gym mem­ber said, “They know what they are do­ing out here. They know why they would be tar­get­ed.”

Up to last night, the TTPS was still look­ing for the sus­pect who shot St John.

Long Cir­cu­lar Mall has been put up for sale by the liq­uida­tors of CL Fi­nan­cial.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning for com­ment, he said, “No com­ment.”