Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

While many fam­i­lies spent Di­vali with loved ones yes­ter­day, Hes­per Ali-Dar­soo was cry­ing at the grave of her el­dest son and youngest grand­daugh­ter, who were gunned down in Moru­ga on Au­gust 21.

“Why are they here?” lament­ed Ali-Dar­soo, as she wiped away tears dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at Tay­lor Trace Ceme­tery, where her el­dest child En­ri­co Guer­ra and five-year-old grand­daugh­ter Ani­ka Guer­ra are buried in a sin­gle cas­ket.

They were shot mul­ti­ple times - Ani­ka was pierced by five bul­lets - when gun­men at­tacked her fa­ther at his mi­ni-mart in St Mary’s Vil­lage.

Their grave is in an area where oth­er rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing Ali-Dar­soo’s fa­ther, sib­lings and cousins are al­so buried.

Ali-Dar­soo ad­mit­ted that she of­ten vis­its their grave, but yes­ter­day’s vis­it was to clean and pre­pare the grave for All Saints tonight.

Lament­ing that last year En­ri­co was with her in the ceme­tery clean­ing the graves of their oth­er rel­a­tives, she said, “Nev­er would I have imag­ined that I would be do­ing this, light­ing up for my son and grand­daugh­ter. Our loved ones are dy­ing. Our coun­try is in a mess and how many of them to­day like me have to come and light up their loved ones to­mor­row and noth­ing is be­ing done.”

As the tears fell, Ali-Dar­soo said she had cried every day since their deaths. Un­able to sleep or eat prop­er­ly, she ad­mit­ted she had lost 31 pounds.

She said her son and grand­daugh­ter were sup­posed to move in­to the up­stairs of his home for his birth­day on No­vem­ber 8.

“It wasn’t like he was sick. He was an en­er­getic, full-of-life young man look­ing for­ward to a won­der­ful fu­ture with his daugh­ter and his fam­i­ly and they stole that from him.”

Ali-Dar­soo, who has been out­spo­ken about her dis­trust of the po­lice, said she had “one on one” pri­vate dis­cus­sions with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers on mat­ters, in­clud­ing En­ri­co and Ani­ka’s mur­ders and the last two were “good.”

Ad­mit­ting that she was stand­ing strong be­cause of her faith in God, she ex­plained that she ex­pe­ri­ences a fluc­tu­a­tion of emo­tions dai­ly, in­clud­ing anger, and would try to find com­fort in look­ing at pho­tos and videos of them.

“I say ‘Lord I hope I have a bet­ter to­day’, but it’s all bad days. It’s nev­er been a good day since,” she lament­ed, adding that rel­a­tives and friends are al­so griev­ing.

She be­lieves the coun­try will nev­er get bet­ter un­til stiffer penal­ties are en­forced for firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

“Imag­ine we are liv­ing like we are in prison. You fix­ing your cam­era sys­tem, you back­ing up your locks, you back­ing up your bur­glar proof­ing, while they (crim­i­nals) roam­ing...just as you con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting mon­ey for tax­es and mon­ey for chang­ing uni­form and mon­ey for every­thing else, put in some­thing in place that you will know if you are found with a gun, ten years (in jail).”

Ali-Dar­soo, who has been mak­ing mul­ti­ple posts about En­ri­co and Ani­ka on so­cial me­dia since their deaths, said she would nev­er let them be for­got­ten and will con­tin­ue to fight for jus­tice.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment and oth­ers in au­thor­i­ty to get se­ri­ous about crime.

“Is like it’s like no big deal like they get­ting im­mune to these things (mur­ders),” she lament­ed.