Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A chop­ping and a se­ries of shoot­ings led to the deaths of six peo­ple in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents across Trinidad hours apart on Tues­day, as po­lice from three dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions are con­tin­u­ing in­quiries.

In the first in­ci­dent, broth­ers, 15-year-old Jovell Paul and 23-year-old Rod­ney Slater were gunned down on Mt Hope Ex­ten­sion at around 12.40 pm.

A quan­ti­ty of spent shells, in­clud­ing those of ri­fle cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion were found at the scene.

Less than an hour lat­er, around 1.20 pm, Wood­brook po­lice found the body of an uniden­ti­fied home­less man at the cor­ner of Kitch­en­er and Gat­acre Streets with chop wounds to his left leg and right arm.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect he was killed by an­oth­er home­less man who re­mained at large up to Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Short­ly af­ter, around 2.15 pm, 27-year-old labour­er Isa­iah Richards was gunned down while do­ing ma­son­ry work at a house on Coun­cil­man Cir­cu­lar, Mor­vant.

Around the same time, 37-year-old An­drew Morales was shot and killed dur­ing a do­mes­tic dis­pute be­tween a woman and a man at a house on Mar­shall Trace, Cunu­pia.

Po­lice said Morales vis­it­ed the home with his girl­friend who got in­to an ar­gu­ment with the ex-boyfriend, who is the fa­ther of her 11-month-old son.

Dur­ing the ar­gu­ment, the sus­pect pulled out a gun and shot Morales sev­er­al times in­clud­ing five times to his head, one to his chest and an­oth­er gun­shot to the left side of his body.

The killer es­caped on a bi­cy­cle which was found and re­turned to the crime scene by a Venezue­lan man who found it aban­doned near a bar.

Hours lat­er on Tues­day night, a 50-year-old Ch­agua­nas man was gunned down near his home.

Po­lice said res­i­dents of Mo­ham­dal­ly Dri­ve, off Joyce Road, heard gun­shots at around 10.15 pm and on check­ing found the body of Dar­ren Mo­ham­dal­ly slumped in the dri­ver’s side seat of his black Toy­ota Hilux.

Mo­ham­dal­ly was shot sev­er­al times and bul­let­holes were vis­i­ble on the dri­ver’s side door, right rear win­dow and tail­gate.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion III Homi­cide Bu­reau are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mur­ders in Ch­agua­nas and Cunu­pia, while Re­gion II in­ves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing the mur­ders in Mor­vant and Mt Hope, with Re­gion I Homi­cide de­tec­tives in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mur­der of the home­less man in Wood­brook.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch there have been 285 mur­ders for the year thus far as of Wednes­day, com­pared to 490 for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said while six mur­ders in a sin­gle day was an un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment, he was wary of in­ter­pret­ing the vi­o­lence as part of a change in tra­jec­to­ry of the over­all mur­der toll.

He not­ed that the drop in mur­ders for 2025 could be large­ly at­trib­uted to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) through height­ened vis­i­bil­i­ty and an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions and felt that the re­cent clus­ter of re­port­ed mur­ders were an anom­aly in the wider trend ob­served.

“The first thing I would say is that we have to be very care­ful against in­ter­pret­ing this as any trend and rather what we would have to do is look at what the long-term pat­tern sug­gests un­der the SoE.

“SoE’s while they have their lim­i­ta­tions, do tend to be as­so­ci­at­ed with de­clines in crimes, not just mur­ders but al­most across the board.

“What I’m say­ing is it would be very pre­ma­ture to look at the six mur­ders, while it is se­ri­ous­ly un­for­tu­nate, to look at the six mur­ders in iso­la­tion and see it as any kind of trend at all, we have to look at the big­ger pic­ture.”

Seep­er­sad how­ev­er ac­knowl­edged that while there was a sta­tis­ti­cal de­cline in mur­ders and oth­er cat­e­gories of crime, it did not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­flect in a greater sense of se­cu­ri­ty among the pub­lic and urged the TTPS to adopt a clear mes­sag­ing cam­paign to raise the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the au­thor­i­ties.

He stressed that pub­lic part­ner­ship and sup­port was crit­i­cal in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lent crime.

“That is one of those things that helps in the de­tec­tion rate.

“Too of­ten we fail when wit­ness­es don’t want to come for­ward, when they don’t want to tes­ti­fy, when peo­ple are afraid to re­port crimes to the po­lice, be­cause they don’t trust the po­lice, so what I would say is that the po­lice re­al­ly needs to con­tin­ue their ef­forts to build their re­la­tion­ship with the pub­lic and ed­u­cate the pub­lic on what can be done.”

He al­so warned that crim­i­nals them­selves de­spite be­ing a rel­a­tive out­lier in the wider sta­tis­ti­cal trend of mur­ders for 2025, crim­i­nals may see the re­cent clus­ter of mur­ders as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to con­tin­ue in their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit for re­sponse to the mur­ders.

A spokesper­son for the TTPS con­firmed that the ques­tions were for­ward­ed to DCP in charge of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Natasha George, how­ev­er no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.