Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters says the fa­tal shoot­ing in St James and the stab­bing death of a teen box­er in San­gre Grande on Tues­day, as well as the in­ci­dent where a man was crushed by a mu­sic truck in San Fer­nan­do on Mon­day, did not mar Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Pe­ters not­ed that al­though the in­ci­dents were trag­ic, they were small in com­par­i­son to the larg­er events.

“I don’t think that it marred any­thing, I think there were in­ci­dents that hap­pened that should not have hap­pened, but any­thing that you do, we are hu­man be­ings... and I think that some­times we for­get that any­thing could go wrong at any time... you can­not say be­cause you had two in­ci­dents or three in­ci­dents that some­thing has marred any­thing. We mag­ni­fy things too much in this place... it is un­for­tu­nate but this did not mar any­thing,” Pe­ters said.

On Tues­day, Irvin Joaquin May­o­ra was killed and four oth­ers in­jured in St James, forc­ing an ear­ly shut­down of cel­e­bra­tions there. Hours lat­er, Prince Charles, 18, was stabbed to death af­ter he got in­to an ar­gu­ment with a man dur­ing Last Lap cel­e­bra­tions. And on Mon­day, 74-year-old Sel­wyn Lit­tle was crushed to death by a mu­sic truck in San Fer­nan­do.

Pe­ters said he con­sid­ered Lit­tle a friend, as they had worked to­geth­er be­fore and of­fered his con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly. Asked about reg­u­la­tions to pre­vent sim­i­lar oc­cur­rences, Pe­ters said these in­ci­dents may be un­avoid­able.

“We will do the best we can to en­sure that this doesn’t hap­pen at all, and we would wish that it nev­er hap­pens... but as long as we have hu­man be­ings in­ter­act­ing with hu­man be­ings, and with ma­chin­ery and any­thing, ac­ci­dents will hap­pen.”

Pe­ters al­so com­mend­ed the TTPS’ work dur­ing the sea­son, say­ing cit­i­zens and tourists felt com­fort­able de­spite the State of Emer­gency.

“I think [the SoE] turned out to be a very good thing... if it’s any­thing, it made every­body feel safer. Every­body had a won­der­ful time. I was talk­ing to some for­eign­ers from Guyana and Eu­rope, and they told me that they feel so safe in Trinidad and To­ba­go. They had no ex­pe­ri­ence of any­thing un­to­ward. As a cit­i­zen of T&T, I want to com­mend the pro­tec­tive ser­vices for the ser­vice that they have giv­en to Trinidad,” he said.

He added, “I think that the in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of what has hap­pened over the last cou­ple of months has lent an ad­di­tion­al lev­el of pro­tec­tion, and I wish that that lev­el of pro­tec­tion can con­tin­ue in what­ev­er way that it can hap­pen, be­cause we see the re­sults, and we feel the re­sults, and I want them to keep on do­ing it.”