Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville

@guardian.co.tt

A late-night vis­it to a fast food strip end­ed with a pop­u­lar mu­sic pro­duc­er be­ing mur­dered the wound­ing of two oth­er men, in­clud­ing a Trini­bad artiste, on Tues­day.

Po­lice said Kaveer Alvin Nan­dram, 28, and two men, both 22, went to the Off D Av­enue food strip on Car­los Street around 11.15 pm to or­der food.

As they left one of the stalls, the trio was shot.

Nan­dram got in­to his white Toy­ota Field­er Wag­on and drove down Car­los Street, but stopped his car near Adam Smith Square when he re­alised he was bleed­ing.

The two oth­er bleed­ing men ran back in­to the food strip, where they re­mained.

Of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) were called in and took the trio to the hos­pi­tal, where Nan­dram was de­clared dead.

The two in­jured men re­ceived emer­gency surgery ear­ly yes­ter­day and were be­ing treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal up to last evening.

St Clair po­lice and of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion I vis­it­ed the scene.

Po­lice found sev­er­al spent shells and a gun at the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the shoot­ing may have been re­lat­ed to Trini­bad mu­sic, which has been as­so­ci­at­ed with gang ac­tiv­i­ty. Of­fi­cers were, how­ev­er, un­sure if Nan­dram was the in­tend­ed tar­get.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, Nan­dram’s fa­ther, Lochan, lament­ed the spate of crime in the coun­try.

Not­ing that Ari­api­ta Av­enue was a fair­ly well-known pub­lic space, the el­der Nan­dram said he did not feel any­where in T&T was safe any­more.

“He just went for food. It’s just so un­safe. Any­where is un­safe in Trinidad. With these gangs, if any­body wants to hit some­body it can be any­where. This coun­try is not safe any­more,” he said.

He said Nan­dram was the el­dest of his two sons and was best known for his pas­sion for mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment.

He said his son was not in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and worked hard to es­tab­lish him­self as a mu­sic pro­fes­sion­al through his DJ Go Glob­al brand.

“He was aware of all the cir­cum­stances of Trinidad with gang war­fare and thing. He was al­ways re­spect­ful to his fam­i­ly and he al­ways lis­tened to us when we spoke to him about it. He tried to pro­tect him­self as much as pos­si­ble but he was pas­sion­ate about the op­por­tu­ni­ty of the mu­sic. He was a cre­ative mind, he wasn’t in any gang or any­thing like that. He al­ways said he want­ed to be a mil­lion­aire.”

Nan­dram said his last in­ter­ac­tion with his son was ear­li­er that evening, when he said he was leav­ing to go to his Val­sayn stu­dio.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the food strip where the shoot­ing hap­pened but man­agers de­clined to com­ment on the in­ci­dent.

One Car­los Street res­i­dent who asked not to be named said she did not know there was a mur­der near­by but was con­cerned about the safe­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty.

“It’s not a nice thing, but I’m sur­prised I liv­ing right here and I didn’t even know about it. I al­ways tell my hus­band to try and get in the yard be­fore 4 pm on Fri­days and Sat­ur­days be­cause it can be re­al­ly rough out there with the dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple com­ing on the av­enue.

“But this hap­pened on a Tues­day night, so you re­al­ly have to won­der if we are do­ing enough to stay safe,” the res­i­dent said.

The two wound­ed men re­mained un­der po­lice guard at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, as of­fi­cers re­ceived re­ports that gun­men may at­tempt to kill the sur­vivors.