RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

One of the vic­tims of a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in Cara­pichaima last Fri­day has died. He has been iden­ti­fied as Joshua “Star­boi Joshie” Mu­ni­ram, a wa­ter ven­dor, of Nizam Mo­hammed Trace, Bank Vil­lage, Cara­pichaima.

Mu­ni­ram was at the home of his friend, a scrap iron deal­er, around 3 pm when a group of gun­men ran in­to the yard and opened fire on them. They tried to run away but were shot and wound­ed.

The gun­men fled through the near­by St Mary’s Ceme­tery.

Po­lice of­fi­cers took the in­jured men to the Cou­va Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, where they were treat­ed and trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Mu­ni­ram, who was shot in the neck, died on Fri­day night. The oth­er vic­tim, who was shot sev­er­al times, re­mains ward­ed at hos­pi­tal in se­ri­ous con­di­tion.

Yes­ter­day, res­i­dents in the area where the shoot­ing took place said they knew both men.

One of them, who said he was a neigh­bour, de­scribed Mu­ni­ram as a “good and hard­work­ing per­son.”

“He used to sell wa­ter on St Mary’s Junc­tion and I heard that his friend called him and he left and went by him. It is short­ly af­ter I hear gun­shots and I tell every­body by me to lie down on the ground,” said the man, who did not give his name.

A rel­a­tive of the scrap iron deal­er, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said she was at home with her child when the gun­men en­tered the yard.

“We saw the masked men run up and they had guns and start to shoot up. I ran with my child and he ran too but I didn’t know it was two of them who got shot. I didn’t even know Joshie died un­til Sat­ur­day morn­ing,” she said.

The woman said she be­lieved her rel­a­tive was the tar­get of the gun­men.

“I heard that there was an al­ter­ca­tion with some men from the next street, Sinaswee Street, but I don’t know what it was about. He does do scrap iron and he wasn’t work­ing for a while and he had some ma­te­r­i­al and was try­ing to build up his house as he has one child. Joshie had two chil­dren,” she said.

Mu­ni­ram’s fa­ther added,
“He was a good boy and I don’t know what re­al­ly hap­pened and why be­cause I was at work and it’s on­ly when I came home I get to hear.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.