Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Through­out its 112-year his­to­ry, Wood­brook has seen a con­stant and rad­i­cal evo­lu­tion.

Be­lieve it or not, in the 19th Cen­tu­ry, it was a sug­ar cane plan­ta­tion. It then evolved in­to a pri­vate es­tate, then a bur­geon­ing res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood, then a small busi­ness hub and then an en­ter­tain­ment/lim­ing spot in the late 1990s.

How­ev­er, there is gen­uine con­cern among res­i­dents that its lat­est evo­lu­tion is among the dark­est of its chap­ters—a hot spot.

While every week thou­sands of out­siders come to the Av­enue for a good time, Wood­brook res­i­dents are in­creas­ing­ly wor­ried by the ac­com­pa­ny­ing threat of vi­o­lent crime.

With­in the last 58 days, three peo­ple were mur­dered on the Av­enue. In fact, since Feb­ru­ary 2023, five peo­ple have been shot dead on the pop­u­lar strip, with all shoot­ings be­lieved to be gang-re­lat­ed. There were al­so re­ports of nu­mer­ous rob­beries, shoot­ings and home in­va­sions.

Last Tues­day, 19-year-old Teneisha Jack­ie was killed, while a 30-year-old man was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured af­ter be­ing shot in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing along Car­los Street and the Av­enue.

On Oc­to­ber 11, 2023, in the same area as Tues­day’s shoot­ing, 28-year-old dee­jay Kaveer Nan­dram was shot dead, while two oth­ers—in­clud­ing a well-known Trini­bad mu­si­cian—were in­jured.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, 2023, Ron­dell Tay­lor was killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing near Fitt Street.

On Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, two men in their 30s were mur­dered, while a British na­tion­al was in­jured in a shoot­ing in front of a pop­u­lar bar.

On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 22, 2023, three men en­tered the Pe­tra Street prop­er­ty of Ryan Allen (name changed for his pro­tec­tion) and at­tempt­ed to break in­to his home. With car­jacks and oth­er tools, they at­tempt­ed for more than an hour to break through the bur­glar-proof­ing, with­out suc­cess. That didn’t put them off. At lunchtime, Ryan’s el­der­ly par­ents came home for lunch.

“When they saw the car pulling in, the ban­dits hid on the side and when my par­ents opened the door to go in­side, they jumped them. They were thor­ough­ly beat­en. They asked for the cam­era sys­tem. My fa­ther is old and he doesn’t know any­thing about that, so he got re­al licks for that but they weren’t able to get the cam­era sys­tem.

“They told them to open up the bed­room and my moth­er re­fused, so she re­ceived plen­ty of licks and they threat­ened to rape her. My fa­ther was then beat­en un­til he col­lapsed. My moth­er even­tu­al­ly opened the bed­room for them. She was then tied up and they then tried to open up a cup­board in the bed­room. They even­tu­al­ly got it open,” he re­called.

At around one o’clock, a per­son de­liv­er­ing cur­ry tick­ets for a rel­a­tive dropped by and knocked on the door. The ban­dits opened the door, beat the per­son and tied them up as well be­fore leav­ing short­ly af­ter.

“My fa­ther was to­tal­ly trau­ma­tised. He was face was ful­ly black and blue.

“A week af­ter there was a rob­bery in West­moor­ings and the own­er killed the two of them. Those were the same ban­dits,” he added.

Allen said in the next three months, there were at least an­oth­er two home in­va­sions on his street alone.

Over at Al­fre­do Street, Glenn— who has lived there for all of his 42 years—rents out apart­ment units to Venezue­lan mi­grants. Two months ago, five of his Venezue­lan ten­ants were robbed by armed, masked men.

“One of the girls, she was work­ing a night shift at a casi­no to pay for her school­ing here in Trinidad and she was fol­lowed home by a guy in a mask. She was fol­lowed in­to our yard and un­for­tu­nate­ly and I’m not say­ing this at all to be fun­ny at all…it was like a bonus for them be­cause in the ac­tu­al yard at that par­tic­u­lar time, four oth­er young stu­dents were do­ing their home­work in the liv­ing room area. They at­tacked all five girls, tak­ing their valu­ables,” he said

He added: “I must say the crime lev­el has re­al­ly got­ten very high and got­ten very, very un­bear­able. We had to ex­pense our­selves by pro­tect­ing our­selves by get­ting house cam­eras, as well as you can vis­i­bly see bur­glar proof­ing right around the en­tire house. It’s a nec­es­sary oblig­a­tion. We are al­so very cau­tious and mind­ful of com­ing home late in the night or even ear­ly in the morn­ing. So it’s not on­ly just the fi­nan­cial as­pect of pro­tect­ing your­self but it’s al­so very drain­ing on an emo­tion­al and mind­ful lev­el be­cause you al­ways have to be guard­ed com­ing in your gate, clos­ing your gate.”

Sis­ters Mary and Doris (whose names were changed by re­quest) have on­ly called Wood­brook home. For most of their 70 years in their com­mu­ni­ty, they’ve walked up and down, what is now, the Av­enue freely. Now, in the twi­light of their lives, that lib­er­ty, they lament­ed, was wrenched away. They feel help­less.

“How would you feel if you heard gun­shots out­side your door when you were try­ing to sleep at 2 am? It’s all of us at risk. There’s been a lot of talk. It’s like you talk about the weath­er abroad and you talk about crime here and with­out any out­come. It’s just like a way of life which is just shock­ing, ab­solute­ly, ap­palling. Hu­man be­ings don’t live like that,” Mary lament­ed.

“I think what’s hap­pen­ing is forc­ing the res­i­dents, who said we are not leav­ing, to live be­hind closed doors; like we are in jail. At night is about the best time in Wood­brook—it used to be—it’s cool, the breezes blow, up go out­side, you have a hedge, a wall, bur­glar proof­ing, so you feel well you are se­cure, and you just want to sit out­side and re­lax. Now, you can’t. Now, you can’t even look out. You are scared to look out if you hear any­thing or see any­thing….maybe a gun­shot com­ing your way.

“When you’re com­ing home, you’re think­ing, I am not even safe com­ing home. I’m not even safe open­ing the gate. It’s just ter­ri­ble. So then you say, I’m not gonna go out or I’m gonna come home by 8 o’clock,” Her sis­ter, Doris, added.

Cameron, 52, whose name was changed, has lived his en­tire life in Car­los Street.

His moth­er, who is 93 years old, is one of the com­mu­ni­ty’s old­est res­i­dents. She’s al­so spent all her life liv­ing in their cur­rent home. Cameron re­called, that grow­ing up as a child, Wood­brook was far more com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed– every­one knew every­one else. Then, as time pro­gressed, more and more res­i­dents be­gan mov­ing out, while more busi­ness­es start­ed mov­ing in. The com­mu­ni­ty would nev­er be the same fol­low­ing that change, he said.

“Well, it’s scary…We used to have a lot of things where the com­mu­ni­ty used to come to­geth­er and do stuff and you used to feel safe. You could have sat down out­side on your porch or what­ev­er with­out feel­ing any sort of thing but now you can’t do that. To just go and walk in the park, you can’t do that with­out feel­ing safe again.

“With­in the last six months, the shoot­ings are you know are of con­cern. Part of it has to do with cer­tain es­tab­lish­ments that are on Av­enue and en­cour­age a cer­tain type of clien­tele. If you’re en­cour­ag­ing that kind of clien­tele, then that’s what you are go­ing to get. You are bring­ing the gang­sters in­to the area, so I guess it’s ex­pect­ed that these kinds of things are go­ing to hap­pen,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Cameron, res­i­dents tried re­peat­ed­ly over the years to have con­sul­ta­tions about ma­jor is­sues like crime and noise pol­lu­tion. He said there were nu­mer­ous pro­pos­als put forth by those in au­thor­i­ty, but noth­ing ever stuck. Cameron be­lieved that res­i­dents have been told things over the years to ap­pease them for a short pe­ri­od - all the while those in au­thor­i­ty see about their own ‘agen­das.’

“The rea­son I haven’t moved as yet is be­cause this is where mom has known her en­tire life. So go­ing to some­where else is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult. But like I said, she’s 93. So at some point, it will be in­evitable and yes, ab­solute­ly, as soon as she’s gone, we are out here.

“I don’t be­lieve the prob­lem is unique to Wood­brook, it’s the en­tire of the coun­try. So, the prob­lem be­ing fixed is not just a Wood­brook prob­lem, it’s a coun­try prob­lem. So where I may move to? I’m not ex­act­ly sure,” he said frankly.

The res­i­dents called for a per­ma­nent po­lice pres­ence on the av­enue, main­ly on week­ends. They be­lieved that the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of Ari­api­ta Av­enue have con­tin­u­ous­ly failed to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the views of res­i­dents.