Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

To­ba­go po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing two mur­ders fol­low­ing a shoot­ing in­ci­dent at Con­cor­dia on Tues­day night.

The vic­tims have been iden­ti­fied as Ken­ny Wolfe, 35, of Glam­or­gan and James Fer­gu­son, 23, of Ba­co­let Point.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 9.15 pm at St Ce­celia Road, Con­cor­dia.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that they heard sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions and on check­ing found a crashed car, li­censed PDJ 2772, in the mid­dle of road with the en­gine run­ning. A white car, li­censed PDD 2304 and with its front bumper miss­ing, was al­so found aban­doned near­by.

Wolfe, who was the dri­ver of the crashed car, was in the com­pa­ny of Fer­gu­son, Nicholas Cow­an and Bron­son Nicholls. Po­lice said they were trav­el­ling along the street when they were am­bushed by gun­men. Po­lice said the white car, which was trav­el­ling in the op­pos­i­tive di­rec­tion, crashed in­to Wolfe’s car, forc­ing him to stop. Armed with se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapons, the men from the white car got out and fired at Wolfe’s ve­hi­cle.

Wolfe, Fer­gu­son, Cow­an and Nicholls at­tempt­ed to es­cape un­der fire but Wolfe was shot in the back and died on the spot. He was found ap­prox­i­mate­ly 78 feet down a bushy in­cline. Cow­an was not in­jured while Nicholls was tak­en to hos­pi­tal for mi­nor in­juries. Fer­gu­son re­mained miss­ing overnight and when Homi­cide Of­fi­cers re­turned to the scene yes­ter­day, with the help of res­i­dents, they found Fer­gu­son’s body rid­dled with gun­shot wounds.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice as­sist­ed with the re­trieval of both bod­ies.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Con­cor­dia res­i­dent Sean Broomes said the in­ci­dent had shocked res­i­dents.

“At this present time, I’m kind of dis­pleased with what go­ing on in here, be­cause in here is a very peace­ful and qui­et neigh­bour­hood. Every­body in here liv­ing as one fam­i­ly, one love, one peace, one uni­ty and it’s sad to see that the youths have to go down this road in this kind of way,” Broomes said.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ci­dent is gang-re­lat­ed and may be re­lat­ed to the Ju­ly 4 mur­der of Alveion “Crime Boss” Nurse. Wolfe and Fer­gu­son’s mur­der al­so took place in the same street where the is­land’s fifth mur­der vic­tim Dwight Turpin lived. Turpin was killed on his job site on June 24.

Speak­ing to the me­dia, ACP To­ba­go Ver­non Roberts said al­though the is­land has record­ed sev­en mur­ders to date, the crime sit­u­a­tion is un­der con­trol in To­ba­go.

James Ferguson

“We are not de­terred by this. We keep press­ing on to solve those crimes and bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice. I just want to re­as­sure the pub­lic and the cit­i­zens of To­ba­go that the po­lice will be do­ing all in their pow­er to solve these crimes,” Roberts said.

“So far, be­fore this crime was com­mit­ted, we had a de­tec­tion rate of six­ty per cent, which is about twice the na­tion­al av­er­age, so of­fi­cers are not daunt­ed, but we con­tin­ue pur­su­ing to solve these crimes.”

Asked about the up­surge of gun-re­lat­ed crimes, Roberts called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to do their part in re­port­ing crimes.

“It’s all about keep­ing To­ba­go safe, every six­ty thou­sand eyes and ears are po­lice of­fi­cers and we all have to play our part in solv­ing To­ba­go’s crime and keep­ing To­ba­go safe and re­duc­ing the fear of crime in To­ba­go. We don’t want per­sons to har­bour crim­i­nal el­e­ments from Trinidad or any­where,” he said

The To­ba­go Homi­cide Bu­reau is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.