Senior Reporter
sascha.wilson@guardian.co.tt
After waking up to a reign of bullets early yesterday morning, Dwayne Pierre shielded his two-year-old daughter with his body, resulting in his demise.
Pierre’s daughter was found under his dead body on their bed with minor injuries to her left hand. Pierre, 26, a labourer, and his daughter would have been asleep on their bed in the downstairs apartment of the family’s home at Lachoos Road, Smart Avenue.
Shortly after 1 am, the gunman or gunmen stood at the back of the apartment and fired through the closed bedroom window, hitting Pierre several times.
A relative told reporters he heard about 20 shots. When he opened the door to Pierre’s bedroom, he said he saw him over his daughter. “His back was full of bullet holes,” he said.
Pierre’s mother, Trinelle Garcia, 47, said her family has been a target of shooting incidents in recent years, but she did not know why.
She said the mother of Pierre’s daughter returned to her home in Jamaica almost two years ago after she was shot in two separate incidents. Garcia said the first shooting occurred when she was six months pregnant with Pierre’s daughter, and her granddaughter was born prematurely.
Garcia said a year later, Pierre and his girlfriend were ambushed on the road, and she was shot. Describing Pierre as a respectable and hardworking person, the mother was uncertain whether his murder was linked to those previous incidents. She believes envy is also a possible motive. “I don’t know if it’s revenge they were looking for, or I don’t know what. I cannot say,” she said.
Police said Pierre was a drug offender. Last month, Lalchan Edwards was found shot to death in the community. Officers of Homicide Bureau Region Three are investigating.