Senior Reporter
jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt
Weeks after a quadruple killing at Phase One, Powder Magazine, Cocorite, residents say they are fearful the killers will return for their intended targets.
On May 4, Shaquille Ottley, 22, 57-year-old Antonio Jack, Sadiki Ottley, 31, and 36-year-old Jonathan Osmond were killed when gunmen opened fire on a group gathered near Building F around 11 pm. Eight other residents, Kennan Downes, 26, Johan Anthony, 22, Jovan Huggins, 27, Moses Thomas, 19, Mylesy James, 39, Ro-Vaughn London, 23, Dwayne Elliot, 36, and 34-year-old Irvin Samuel, were injured in the attack.
When Guardian Media visited the area yesterday, the remnants of flambeaux could still be seen and the names of the deceased were etched in concrete near where the shootings occurred. A stone’s throw away from the murder scene, police officers and soldiers were on patrol.
Two women, who did not want to be identified, said there is a sense of foreboding in the community.
“You can’t feel safe to go, you can’t feel safe to lime. Everybody just sticking to themselves and liming inside. The youths and all trying to be indoors liming because that is the safest place to be, home.”
Another woman said residents are living with that fear because none of the men killed were involved in criminal activities. She said the killers got the “innocent ones” she is fearful they will return to hunt down their intended targets.
“It just leaves you wondering, when they coming back. Not if but when because the people who died are not in anything which means who they came for they did not get,” she said.
Shortly after the killings, criminologist Dr Wendell C Wallace warned that mass shootings might be here to stay as criminals want to send a message to their enemies.
“It’s a two-way sort of situation that if we cannot get the intended target, then we’re going to strike at the core of your existence, which happens to be the community or the people around you. They are sending that message and you know that message is becoming increasingly heinous, so that’s what I have been seeing, that increasing trend over the past three to five years” he said.
Radha Baljo, whose common-law-husband, Osmond, was killed in the attack, said she is hoping for justice as his death has left an emotional and financial burden.
Baljo said she is comforted somewhat by the presence of police officers but is afraid to sleep at night.
“Right now I just looking for a little justice for the back here. Right now, I could do with somebody to sit down and talk to and be happy around them. I does be frighten to sleep where my common-law husband was staying with me,” she said.
Alana Isaac, Jack’s widow, who has lived in the area for 37 years, also wants justice.
“Everybody still in a mess. The place quiet and people not feeling good at all. Nobody can get over this, not now and not for a long time,” she said.
