Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

There was an in­creased po­lice pres­ence in and around the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, as of­fi­cers set up a se­cu­ri­ty net a day af­ter a Mar­aval man was gunned down mo­ments af­ter ar­riv­ing home from Pana­ma.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the air­port yes­ter­day, two em­ploy­ees, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said apart from a po­lice pres­ence, there was an in­crease in both armed and un­armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers as­signed to the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.

One woman said she re­port­ed to work hours af­ter the killing on Thurs­day and had been look­ing over her shoul­der since. She said there was an air of un­ease but she chose to re­main.

The oth­er em­ploy­ee said he felt a bit more com­fort­able see­ing the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty de­spite his ear­li­er reser­va­tions.

Re­turn­ing na­tion­al Paul Ad­jod­ha said he heard of the killing on In­sta­gram. Asked how he felt about the killing, the 69-year-old said he was tak­ing it in stride but had no feel­ings of dis­com­fort be­ing in the air­port, al­though he ad­mit­ted that could change.

“The air­port is a sa­cred place. It is sup­posed to be a sanc­tu­ary. Air­ports are usu­al­ly gun-free zones. It’s up to the au­thor­i­ties to en­force that kind of thing,” Ad­jod­ha said.

While there was a no­table in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty in­side the air­port, out­side, po­lice of­fi­cers al­so con­duct­ed a road­block ex­er­cise, adding to the se­cu­ri­ty net around the air­port.

Asked if they were able to de­tect any il­le­gal guns or drugs, one of­fi­cer at the scene said he could not an­swer that and ad­vised that what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion is need­ed would come from the po­lice com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit.

Fish­er­man Arkim Quashie, 33, was gunned down less than an hour af­ter he ar­rived in T&T from Pana­ma just be­fore 2 am on Thurs­day. Po­lice said Quashie was sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger-side seat of a blue Hyundai Tuc­son when gun­men in a sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da drove near the ve­hi­cle and shot at it sev­er­al times, hit­ting him. One of Quashie’s friends who was in the car at the time was al­so shot in both legs.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed the scene and found a quan­ti­ty of 5.56, 7.62 and 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

Po­lice said Quashie was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for crim­i­nal af­fil­i­a­tions.

Mean­while, speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Thurs­day night, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date for Tu­na­puna and for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer Roger Alexan­der ad­dressed the air­port at­tack.

“How can you be think­ing and not put prop­er leg­is­la­tion and poli­cies in place to pro­tect your do­mes­tic air­port? How? It is the first place where ter­ror­ism might want to raise its ug­ly head, but it is ex­posed. I heard this morn­ing peo­ple were run­ning left, right and cen­tre, hid­ing, hid­ing, hid­ing, and no­body was there to de­fend our na­tion.”

He said the killing left a blot on the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

“At least let the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty see that even if they think of it and it start­ed; it must be put down al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. But I guess they (the gov­ern­ment) have a soft­er side of deal­ing with things, so we wait. We wait,” Alexan­der said.