A Mar­aval man is call­ing for jus­tice and an­swers, af­ter his son was gunned down mo­ments af­ter he re­turned home from abroad at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, in what po­lice be­lieve was an or­ches­trat­ed hit.

Fish­er­man Arkim Quashie, 33, was gunned down less than an hour af­ter he ar­rived in T&T from Pana­ma just be­fore 2 am.

Po­lice said Quashie was sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger-side seat of a blue Hyundai Tuc­son, when gun­men in a sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da drove near the ve­hi­cle and shot at it sev­er­al times, hit­ting him.

One of Quashie’s friends who was in the car at the time was al­so shot in both legs as the gun­men sped off.

Air­port se­cu­ri­ty called the po­lice and an am­bu­lance took both men to hos­pi­tal, where Quashie was de­clared dead.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed the scene and found a quan­ti­ty of 5.56, 7.62 and 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

Po­lice said Quashie was known to them and was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for crim­i­nal af­fil­i­a­tions.

How­ev­er, speak­ing at the fam­i­ly’s Nicholas Street, Mar­aval, home hours af­ter his son’s mur­der, the man fa­ther, Joseph Quashie, claimed po­lice of­fi­cers had re­peat­ed­ly tar­get­ed Arkim since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared last De­cem­ber.

He said his son was not at home dur­ing the lat­est vis­it by po­lice a month ago, but in­sist­ed a threat was made by the of­fi­cers at the home.

“The last words the po­lice tell me here as a fa­ther is that they’re go­ing to kill him in the air­port. They said he can­not leave to go any­where. They said my son can­not leave be­cause it have po­lice wait­ing for him. They come here three times a week and got noth­ing,” Quashie said.

When asked why po­lice were tar­get­ing his son, Quashie said the of­fi­cers de­scribed him as a gang mem­ber but did not iden­ti­fy which gang he was a part of when he pressed them for fur­ther de­tails.

He said he had not seen his son for the past two months as he was va­ca­tion­ing in an­oth­er Caribbean is­land, but was in con­tact with him. He said his son orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to re­turn home lat­er this year but chose to come back to Trinidad to cel­e­brate the East­er week­end with the fam­i­ly and younger rel­a­tives he cher­ished.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said he was un­aware of the claims made by Quashie and urged the fam­i­ly to re­port the in­ci­dents to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

Ben­jamin said such se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions war­rant­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as he vowed to take all claims of po­lice mis­con­duct se­ri­ous­ly, but said with­out a re­port be­ing made there was lit­tle that could be done.

“We have a way of deal­ing with these is­sues. The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty is there if peo­ple be­lieve what is be­ing done to them is not fair and if po­lice of­fi­cers have breached their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. There is a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to po­lice cor­rup­tion and po­lice mis­con­duct,” Ben­jamin said.

“There­fore, with­out any ev­i­dence to sup­port that (the claims), I am say­ing the sit­u­a­tion is it was not the po­lice that did it to the gen­tle­man. The po­lice re­spond­ed and they re­spond­ed as they would in any sit­u­a­tion.”

Ben­jamin said he was en­gaged in sev­er­al meet­ings and dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials from the air­port se­cu­ri­ty and sub­or­di­nates over plans to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties at the air­port.

He added that the po­lice were “mak­ing in­roads” in the en­quiry as they were fol­low­ing up on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there had nev­er been such vi­o­lent in­ci­dents near an air­port, Ben­jamin said he be­lieved crim­i­nals were be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly des­per­ate and may be test­ing the re­solve of the au­thor­i­ties now that the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was over, but warned that the po­lice were still in con­trol.

“We are keep­ing our eyes on the pulse and we’re not go­ing to re­lent. We have put things in place to en­sure we have the nec­es­sary war­rants to go in­to homes once we recog­nise peo­ple are in­volved in crime.”

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions) Suzette Mar­tin said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were view­ing CCTV footage from the air­port and in­ter­view­ing wit­ness­es as part of their en­quiries. She said po­lice were not rul­ing out any pos­si­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty as the mo­tive for Quashie’s mur­der. Mar­tin al­so ac­knowl­edged the se­ri­ous­ness of such an at­tack near an in­ter­na­tion­al air­port, de­scrib­ing it as a “brazen act of vi­o­lence” near such a heav­i­ly traf­ficked lo­ca­tion.

“The TTPS is ac­tive­ly in­creas­ing its pres­ence in and around all crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture points, in­clud­ing air­ports, to de­ter and re­spond swift­ly to any threat.”

A me­dia re­lease from the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T con­firmed that among the dif­fer­ent se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures planned, some took ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly while oth­ers would be in­tro­duced in the com­ing days.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the air­port, blood­stains were still vis­i­ble on the side­walk out­side the Ar­rivals Ter­mi­nal, while sev­er­al bul­let holes were seen on the walls near­by.

Com­ment­ing on the at­tack, trav­eller Ja­son Bel­fon said he was not re­as­sured by the promise of added se­cu­ri­ty, as he lament­ed how un­pre­dictable vi­o­lence had be­come in T&T.

“I’m very con­cerned be­cause I don’t know if I walk from here to there if some­body is go­ing to hold me up.

“I might walk away from the con­fines of the build­ing and se­cu­ri­ty may have no need to look be­yond a cer­tain point, so per­haps they could beef up some­thing with a po­lice pres­ence here,” he said.

One taxi dri­ver, who asked not to be named, said the mur­der was part of a larg­er se­cu­ri­ty con­cern raised by dri­vers. The dri­ver ac­knowl­edged that due to the na­ture of the fa­cil­i­ty, it would be dif­fi­cult for se­cu­ri­ty to mon­i­tor each car en­ter­ing the com­pound but still felt more ought to be done.

PM con­cerned

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has de­scribed yes­ter­day’s mur­der at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port as “com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able,” not­ing he con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les as soon as he heard of the in­ci­dent.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, Young said he re­ceived a re­port from the TTPS through Gon­za­les, not­ing the sit­u­a­tion was be­ing dealt with.

“We have asked them (the au­thor­i­ties) to as­sess the type of se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments but al­so, it is my un­der­stand­ing that this is an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion that may see some re­sults very soon.”

Young re­ferred to sec­tions on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­tained in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s man­i­festo un­veiled on Wednes­day and said re­sources were be­ing placed to bet­ter se­cure the coun­try. - With re­port­ing by Jesse Ramdeo