An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A 29-year-old man was de­tained at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day night in con­nec­tion with the mass shoot­ing in­ci­dent at Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, hours ear­li­er.

La­belled a “per­son of in­ter­est”, the 29-year-old man was nabbed around 10.30 pm as he wait­ed to board a flight bound for JFK In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, New York.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the man had been sought for ques­tion­ing af­ter sev­er­al rounds of 5.56mm am­mu­ni­tion and 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, along with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing five rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, were re­cov­ered at his house fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of a search war­rant.

A 33-year-old rel­a­tive was ar­rest­ed at the house and al­so re­mained in cus­tody yes­ter­day.

Over 42 spent shells were re­cov­ered out­side Build­ing F by foren­sic of­fi­cials fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, which claimed the lives of Shaquille Ot­t­ley, 22; Sadi­ki Ot­t­ley, 31; Jonathan Os­mond, 36; and An­to­nio Jack, 57; around 11 pm on Sat­ur­day. Eight oth­ers were al­so in­jured in the at­tack.

Among the spent shells found at the scene were 7.62 mm am­mu­ni­tion and 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

While of­fi­cers re­mained tight-lipped about the progress of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia was told one man who had been shot in the leg was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Rel­a­tives said this vic­tim did not live on the com­pound and had on­ly been vis­it­ing when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

They said he would not be re­turn­ing to the area any­time soon.

No fur­ther up­dates were of­fered on the health of the oth­ers who were said to still be hos­pi­talised.

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said, “We are look­ing to iden­ti­fy, lo­cate and ap­pre­hend sus­pects in re­la­tion to this im­por­tant shoot­ing.”

Asked if the shoot­ing could have been per­pe­trat­ed by per­sons out­side the Co­corite area, he said, “I wouldn’t say it was an out­side job. What we high­ly sus­pect is war­ring fac­tions in the area seek­ing to con­trol one ge­o­graph­i­cal space which is caus­ing a re­sis­tance with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

TTPS Wit­ness and Vic­tim Sup­port Of­fi­cer, Chris­tine Forde, said they of­fered more sup­port to res­i­dents yes­ter­day.

“We are here to re­al­ly reach out to the res­i­dents to give them some safe­ty and com­fort based on the trau­ma they would have ex­pe­ri­enced,” she said at the site.

Forde said they al­so vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal to speak with rel­a­tives of the de­ceased and the sur­vivors.

“Most of them have ac­cept­ed the in­ter­ven­tions, so there will be fol­low-up con­ver­sa­tions with them to help them deal with the trau­ma.”

Ad­mit­ting the me­dia had scared off peo­ple yes­ter­day, Forde said anx­i­ety and fear would be present. She said to­day would be the last day her unit will be in the area but res­i­dents were free to walk in­to a sta­tion with­in the West­ern Di­vi­sion and speak with of­fi­cers. She al­so ad­vised per­sons to con­tact 796-7039.

Trau­ma­tised res­i­dents refuse to leave homes

De­spite the swel­ter­ing heat yes­ter­day, res­i­dents of Phase 1, Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, re­mained locked in­side their apart­ments, scared to ven­ture out for work or to even send their chil­dren to school.

Res­i­dents dis­ap­peared as re­porters re­turned to the scene of Sat­ur­day’s mass shoot­ing, which left four dead and eight oth­ers nurs­ing in­juries at hos­pi­tal. Po­lice of­fi­cials who were in the midst of coun­selling were sur­prised to see the trau­ma­tised res­i­dents shy­ing away from the cam­eras and hur­ry­ing off in­to their re­spec­tive homes.

Sev­er­al per­sons ap­proached re­fused to speak about the in­ci­dent.

But at least one woman, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, in­sist­ed, “I don’t want peo­ple to feel there is some big gang ri­val­ry go­ing on in here.”

Vo­cif­er­ous­ly deny­ing it was gang re­lat­ed, as was be­ing claimed on so­cial me­dia, she con­tin­ued, “It don’t have that in here. No­body who dead by those build­ings was in any­thing. In here is a love, is just a love. All of we was one.”

Sev­er­al young men who were present at the time of the shoot­ing, along with some of the moth­ers who re­side at the hous­ing com­plex, were busy yes­ter­day pow­er-wash­ing the walk­way and stairs where the vic­tims died.

One woman told re­porters, “We had to wash down the blood with bleach and lye...and pow­er wash the place. All the stair­case and build­ing smelling fresh.”

In­di­cat­ing she couldn’t even look at the area when she left for work, one of the women de­clared, “I am an­gry.”

“I had to pass by the gate but I kept my head straight cause I don’t want to see that...it was like clots and guts all over place when it hap­pened,” she said.

Con­firm­ing that a male rel­a­tive of hers had been left fight­ing for his life at hos­pi­tal since the in­ci­dent, she gave thanks that an­oth­er male rel­a­tive was spared a sim­i­lar fate as he had left to take a bath and end­ed up falling asleep.

She said, “That is what saved him or he would have been out­side too.”

An­oth­er said two of the vic­tims had moved out of the area but of­ten re­turn to the hous­ing com­plex to lime and check on rel­a­tives, which she claimed was nor­mal.

She stressed, “Is a good­ness in here. Every­body does come to lime. Any hour you can see peo­ple lim­ing and chil­dren out­side play­ing.

“Noth­ing don’t take place in here. All them shots fire and no­body ain’t even fire back cause no­body on that. All the Mag­a­zine have is mouth mur­der­ers.”

Four in­no­cent lives gone

Sad­dened over the deaths of the four men, a fe­male res­i­dent who came out to get some­thing to eat be­fore head­ing back in­side said, “Is re­al, re­al mad­ness that went on.”

Un­cer­tain jus­tice will be re­alised in this in­ci­dent, like so many oth­ers, she lament­ed, “You doesn’t get jus­tice, is in­no­cent peo­ple life just go­ing down. I can’t see the mo­tive for it.”

Say­ing many oth­er lives could have been lost, as both young and old res­i­dents of­ten pa­tro­n­ised the burg­er man who sells at the pop­u­lar lim­ing spot where the shoot­ing oc­curred, the woman said, “Imag­ine if it had chil­dren and el­der­ly peo­ple there. Them fel­las were just recre­at­ing there.”

Point­ing to Rad­ha Baljo, the griev­ing wife of Jonathan Os­mond, as she sat un­der a man­go tree smok­ing a cig­a­rette and sip­ping a beer, she asked, “Who help­ing she now?”

Ges­tur­ing around the com­plex, which re­mained qui­et and de­sert­ed, she added, “Every­body in­side mind­ing their busi­ness.”

Re­fer­ring to the killings, which brought back mem­o­ries of her for­mer loss al­so, the woman shook her head as she said, “Is like Sa­tan send them to do this mad­ness. The gun­shots was like rain...you ain’t hear no bang. It was just a sud­den show­er. It had to be a ma­chine gun cause you ain’t hear no sin­gle shots...is just like rain.”

Say­ing he was feel­ing some­what safer since Sat­ur­day be­cause po­lice and sol­diers were con­tin­u­ous­ly con­duct­ing mo­bile and foot pa­trols in and around the apart­ment com­plex, a male res­i­dent hus­tling to ef­fect me­chan­i­cal re­pairs to his car said, “I hope we get some jus­tice.”

How­ev­er, he ex­pressed fears that the killers could re­turn and called for a po­lice post to be set up in the area and for an elec­tric gate to be in­stalled at the en­trance to the com­plex.

He said while there is a se­cu­ri­ty gate in place, it usu­al­ly re­mained open dur­ing the day and night and that all kinds of ve­hi­cles were free to dri­ve in and out, as had been the case with the gun­men who drove on­to the com­pound.

“If the po­lice have a post where they could see the ve­hi­cles com­ing in and the res­i­dents have a card to swipe to get in, like in the high ar­eas...it would be some­thing,” he sug­gest­ed.

He urged the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion as the land­lord to step up and in­crease se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the com­pound.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents wel­comed the vis­it by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on Sat­ur­day.

One woman said, “Like she said, we have to pray. Every­thing will be done in God’s tim­ing but we just have to have faith.”

Rel­a­tives of slain men break down

Mean­while, wails and cries for jus­tice yes­ter­day filled the air at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James, as rel­a­tives of the four men iden­ti­fied their bod­ies.

Col­laps­ing as she ex­it­ed the wait­ing room at the FSC, Sadi­ki Ot­t­ley’s moth­er, Anne Marie Pierre, cried, “Oh God, they take my child.”

Af­ter be­ing bod­i­ly lift­ed from where she col­lapsed, she told re­porters, “Is every week­end, that is what they does do...lime, sit down, play cards, they does buss a cook.”

Cry­ing as she plead­ed for the fa­ther of a sev­en-year-old girl to walk back through the door, an emo­tion­al Pierre added, “Is too much, I nev­er nev­er know is so it does feel. I hear moth­ers cry al­ready but un­til it reach it front my door...is a dread, dread thing.”

Pierre said the foot­ball-lov­ing Ot­t­ley, 31, was loved by every­one, and his death had left fam­i­ly and friends far and wide un­able to eat, sleep or func­tion.

“Every­body chil­dren in­no­cent...enough is enough...” she trailed off.

“They go lime, they go smoke, they go drink. They not in no crime. They will put on mu­sic and play, they ain’t rob­bing no­body. Every­body they shoot there is in­no­cent chil­dren, in­no­cent peo­ple, in­no­cent men lim­ing and just hav­ing a good time.”

Pierre spec­u­lat­ed that the crime sit­u­a­tion was on­ly go­ing to get worse, whilst a male rel­a­tive said as long the “bobol” con­tin­ued, in­no­cent lives would con­tin­ue to be lost.

Shaquille Ot­t­ley – who is un­re­lat­ed to Sadi­ki Ot­t­ley – was al­so killed as he stopped to lime with the res­i­dents as he was ac­cus­tomed to.

Shaquille lived a short dis­tance away and ac­cord­ing to a fe­male rel­a­tive, “If he was a gun­man, I coul­da un­der­stand it.”

Rad­ha Baljo de­scribed her com­mon-law hus­band Jonathan Os­mond as one who would go about his busi­ness with­out in­ter­fer­ing with any­one.

Cling­ing on to friend Wendy Skin­ner-Ab­dul­lah, Baljo wept bit­ter­ly as she said, “He don’t do no­body noth­ing. He is not a bad boy. He does be by him­self...he don’t go any­where af­ter he come from his gar­den.”

Re­veal­ing they had a three-year-old boy who had been turned over to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty due to them be­ing un­able to prop­er­ly care for him, Baljo screamed, “Come home Jonathan...you too gone and leave me.”

Ab­dul­lah ad­vised the youths to pray and know God.