Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­lies of the men mur­dered in Gon­za­les on Sun­day are hop­ing that trou­bled youths who may be vul­ner­a­ble to gangs can re­ceive ad­di­tion­al pri­or­i­ty as part of re­newed ef­forts to fight crime.

The men—off-du­ty po­lice­man Davy Le Maitre, 32, Michael Ross, 24, and Josi­ah Mal­oney, 23, were on the cor­ner of Lange and Ju­bilee streets, Gon­za­les, on Sun­day af­ter­noon when a black Nis­san Almera drove near them.

Gun­men got out of the car and shot the trio, killing them as they tried to run away. Oth­er by­standers ran to safe­ty to avoid the at­tack­ers. A small child had been at the scene with adults just min­utes be­fore the shoot­ing oc­curred.

Res­i­dents took Le Maitre to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was de­clared dead, while of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force who re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing took Ross and Mal­oney to the hos­pi­tal where they were al­so de­clared dead short­ly af­ter.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the fam­i­ly’s Gon­za­les home yes­ter­day, Le Maitre’s moth­er, Natasha Pierre, said she did not have the words to de­scribe the loss of her son, un­der such vi­o­lent and un­pre­dictable cir­cum­stances.

She said Le Maitre had been a po­lice­man for the past 11 years and was as­signed to River­side Plaza. Pierre said her son was re­turn­ing from a near­by mi­ni-mart and in­ad­ver­tent­ly walked di­rect­ly in­to the shoot­ing.

Pierre ac­cept­ed that while be­ing a po­lice­man was a dan­ger­ous job, she was deeply sad­dened that her son was not safe even while he was off-du­ty and away from the risks of law en­force­ment work.

She said her son was lim­ing a few hous­es away from the fam­i­ly home when the at­tack be­gan, re­call­ing the sound of gun­fire.

“It was a lot of gun­shots. Once I know he’s not home and I know he gone to lime, he is the first per­son I call when I hear gun­shots and I tried call­ing him yes­ter­day, but the phone just kept ring­ing. There was no an­swer. Po­lice does some­times be in the wrong place at the wrong time too. Once he go out there to work, every­day I used to pray for my child.”

Asked if she could speak di­rect­ly to Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice on what could be done to bet­ter se­cure com­mu­ni­ties, Pierre said while tra­di­tion­al polic­ing was ap­pre­ci­at­ed, more should be done to pre­vent way­ward young men from falling in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Put things in place for the youths who now fin­ish school, who have noth­ing to do and who don’t want to go out there and look for a job. Put cen­tres and make them learn a trade in­stead of just lim­ing around and sit­ting around do­ing noth­ing so that this could be pre­vent­ed,” she ap­pealed.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to Eliz­a­beth Ross, the aunt of Michael Ross, who was al­so killed in the at­tack.

The el­der Ross said that while she was deeply sad­dened by her nephew’s mur­der, she and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers had re­peat­ed­ly tried to steer him away from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments he as­so­ci­at­ed with.

“He grew up in the church and in a re­li­gious fam­i­ly but he just start­ed to lime with one or two fel­las around the area who he grew up with. We al­ways talked to him and re­mind­ed him that friends car­ry them and don’t bring you back, some­times he used to take it se­ri­ous­ly but oth­er times he would just say, ‘Yea, yea, yea.’”

She al­so urged young men to avoid bad com­pa­ny and do their best to re­sist pres­sure to get in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I feel some youths just need to be steered cor­rect­ly and get the right sense of di­rec­tion, they need that pur­pose, to them I can al­so say life is worth liv­ing, re­gard­less of what the sit­u­a­tion is, every­thing is for a sea­son. Some­times we have a nice, suc­cess­ful sea­son and we reach a low point, but it doesn’t give you the right to go out there and mix and min­gle with the wrong peo­ple.”

Ross said she al­so heard the sound of the gun­shots from her home and held on­to her chil­dren while stay­ing low to the floor of the house.

One Gon­za­les res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, told Guardian Me­dia that she knew Le Maitre, Ross and Mal­oney since they were boys and was sad­dened that their lives end­ed so vi­o­lent­ly.

“These were lit­tle fel­las who I ac­cus­tomed see­ing up and down the road and now they gone just like that. This is not the Gon­za­les I was ac­cus­tomed to. You can’t even call this gang re­lat­ed be­cause this was just some wan­na-be’s who have guns and want to start trou­ble in the neigh­bour­hood.”

Dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said that there were re­newed op­er­a­tions in Bel­mont and Gon­za­les un­der the su­per­vi­sion of head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom.

“He would have placed ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er, boots on the ground, in­creased the po­lice pres­ence so we have ac­tive ... both overt and covert op­er­a­tions in train as we speak to treat with the sit­u­a­tion.”

While in the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, sev­er­al po­lice pa­trols were seen cir­cling the ar­eas from Lange Street, on­to Vin­cent Brown Street and across So­gren Trace, as res­i­dents re­mained in­side their homes.