RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Ex­act­ly one week af­ter own­er of pop­u­lar Port-of-Spain restau­rant Jen­ny’s on the Boule­vard slammed the po­lice for al­leged ha­rass­ment at her busi­ness, Jen­ny Dan-Shar­ma says she’s moved on and has giv­en the as­sur­ance the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has her full sup­port as they con­tin­ue their probe in­to a shoot­ing in­ci­dent on her prop­er­ty.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dan-Shar­ma said, “In spite of the in­ci­dent re­cent­ly at my busi­ness, I’ve moved past that and am 100 per cent in sup­port of my com­mu­ni­ty po­lice of­fi­cers and will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on, trust and main­tain my good re­la­tion­ship, as I’ve done in the past."

On Tues­day this week, po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing a shoot­ing in­ci­dent that oc­curred ear­li­er at Dan-Shar­ma's busi­ness, lo­cat­ed along Cipri­ani Boule­vard, found at least nine bul­let holes in var­i­ous ar­eas of the build­ing. A po­lice of­fi­cer con­firmed gun­men opened fire be­tween 2 and 2.30 am on Tues­day and that there was struc­tur­al dam­age to the build­ing, in­clud­ing bul­let holes in sev­er­al glass win­dows. Po­lice said the gun­men were seen leav­ing the scene in a white ve­hi­cle. A Cu­mu­to man was de­tained for ques­tion­ing but he was re­leased from po­lice cus­tody on Thurs­day.

On the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the shoot­ing, Dan-Shar­ma said she was sat­is­fied with how the po­lice had been han­dling the mat­ter.

"They are con­stant­ly sup­port­ive and li­ais­ing with us since the in­ci­dent and yes, I am very op­ti­mistic as they are get­ting rapid re­sponse and mak­ing progress on this mat­ter,” she said.

Asked if she was aware that a man was de­tained for ques­tion­ing in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent, she replied, "No. I have no in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the per­son in cus­tody from Cu­mu­to but I heard some­one was be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed."

Asked if the shoot­ing in­ci­dent has af­fect­ed her busi­ness, Dan-Shar­ma replied: "Our cus­tomer flow is no dif­fer­ent from the norm. They are more con­cerned about our well be­ing. And I want to thank the pub­lic for their over­whelm­ing mes­sages, calls and con­cerns."

How­ev­er, Dan-Shar­ma said the in­ci­dent has not af­fect­ed her in any way.

“I try not to think too much of any­thing. We live in very try­ing times, any mo­ment can be un­for­tu­nate or dis­tress­ing. If it hap­pens, we have to deal with it and move for­ward quick­ly. It’s al­ways how we deal with it that mat­ters. I am not pan­icky or fear­ful. I have in­creased se­cu­ri­ty. Armed and un­armed."

Dan-Shar­ma, how­ev­er, said she was hope­ful the COVID re­stric­tions on the sale of al­co­hol dur­ing in-house din­ing can be lift­ed.

"Maybe 1-2 glass­es max­i­mum. It’s very tough on peo­ple at this time. They just want to be out and re­lax a bit. It’s very dif­fi­cult for many peo­ple to dine with­out hav­ing a drink or two. I hope it will be lift­ed soon," Dan-Shar­ma said.

She al­so not­ed that the vac­cine is al­so "very im­por­tant to us as we need to get things back to nor­mal."

The shoot­ing in­ci­dent oc­curred three days af­ter Dan-Shar­ma made a pub­lic post on so­cial me­dia al­leg­ing po­lice ha­rass­ment over the COVID-19 pro­to­cols at her busi­ness.

On March 13, Shar­ma al­leged po­lice ha­rass­ment when at about 10.15 pm, three vans loaded with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8-12 of­fi­cers walked in­to her busi­ness. She said they pro­ceed­ed to in­di­cate that they were in breach of the COVID pro­to­cols al­though it was not yet at the 10.30 pm clos­ing time stip­u­lat­ed un­der the pro­to­cols. She said there were on­ly a few cus­tomers still there at the time as they were wrap­ping up.