Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says there is no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that gang­sters are mark­ing the chil­dren of their ri­vals for death.

His com­ment came in re­sponse to a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive which re­vealed that al­most a dozen boys un­der the age of 17 had lost their lives in the last 22 months due to war­ring gangs and gun vi­o­lence.

With­in the past week, two chil­dren—nine-year-old Jo­mol Mod­este, of En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, and three-year-old Naz­im Owen, of La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin—were shot dead in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents.

Com­ment­ing on this on Wednes­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob not­ed that gang mem­bers of long ago ho­n­oured a code where women and chil­dren of their en­e­mies were not harmed in dis­putes. How­ev­er, Ja­cob said in re­cent times this code was be­ing bro­ken as oth­er peo­ple, in­clud­ing chil­dren, were los­ing their lives in gun at­tacks.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Hinds said it does not ap­pear that chil­dren are de­lib­er­ate­ly be­ing tar­get­ed.

“From the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to me, it does not ap­pear as though there is any ev­i­dence or fo­cus on the part of gang­sters to kill chil­dren. A child was killed in Diego Mar­tin and from the re­ports avail­able to us, it ap­pears as though the child was an oc­cu­pant of the ve­hi­cle which was at­tacked,” Hinds said.

He added too that “it ap­pears that nine-year-old Mod­este was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I have in­for­ma­tion be­cause I vis­it­ed the area with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the Chief of De­fence Staff and oth­er arms of law en­force­ment. I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with res­i­dents and peo­ple who were close to the nine-year-old and based on what they heard, and based on in­for­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob had, there was no in­di­ca­tion that the child was tar­get­ed,” Hinds said.

He ex­plained: “But he might have been cer­tain­ly in the wrong place when these ig­no­rant, emp­ty, gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals drove there in a bread van and shot up the place for what­ev­er mo­ti­vat­ed them, per­haps to­tal­ly un­aware that this nine-year-old was where he was and he fell vic­tim to one of these dirty bul­lets.”

Hinds said the mur­ders are un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion and so far, there has been no in­for­ma­tion that chil­dren are be­ing tar­get­ed by gangs.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent on Wednes­day night, Ko­rey Clarke and his wife Saman­tha Patrick, both 30, were at their Aboud Cir­cu­lar, St James apart­ment when they were shot dead in their bed by gun­men. How­ev­er, their sev­en-month-old daugh­ter was spared, al­though rel­a­tives be­lieve this was be­cause they shield­ed her from bul­lets.

Po­lice be­lieve as the shoot­ing be­gan, both Clarke and Patrick used their bod­ies to shield the ba­by girl, who was al­so ly­ing on the bed.

Last week, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher was ques­tioned about the in­crease in dri­ve-by shoot­ings this year, which was re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of 12 chil­dren and the wound­ing of eight oth­ers in the last 22 months. She said many of these shoot­ings were the re­sult of gang vi­o­lence.

Joanne Archie, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, said these killings were of grave con­cern to the TTPS. She said ev­i­dence shows that in some cas­es, the chil­dren’s par­ents were in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties. Archie said vic­tims who sur­vive the shoot­ings had re­ceived coun­selling from the TTPS’ Vic­tim and Sup­port Unit.