An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Three peo­ple–a man, his wife and teenage son–were ex­e­cut­ed on Mon­day night in Pe­tit Val­ley af­ter they al­leged­ly re­fused to dis­close the where­abouts of their sec­ond son, who was be­lieved to be the tar­get.

Mar­lon Lee, 41; his com­mon-law wife, Sali­na Ro­driguez, 34; and his son Maleek Lee, 17, were all shot mul­ti­ple times by armed as­sailants around 9.36 pm at their home at Si­ta Trace, off Up­per Pi­o­neer Dri­ve.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 9 mm spent shell cas­ings along with two live rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion and one de­formed pro­jec­tile were re­cov­ered at the scene.

Po­lice con­firmed “it was an ex­e­cu­tion-style killing,” and at­trib­uted the mur­ders to gang vi­o­lence. How­ev­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials were un­able to ver­i­fy a the­o­ry that the killings were meant to send a mes­sage to Lee’s re­main­ing off­spring, a teenage boy, who al­leged­ly is­sued threats to a re­port­ed gang leader in the area.

The three vic­tims were re­port­ed­ly asleep in­side the mod­est board house, lo­cat­ed off the main track, when Maleek came out to use the toi­let. It was be­lieved he was am­bushed and killed first, and that the gun­shots alert­ed the adults in­side.

The gun­men, it was claimed, had come from the bush­es be­hind the house and en­tered the home us­ing the back door. Peo­ple liv­ing close by ini­tial­ly thought the gun­fire was fire­works. But they soon re­alised that some­thing was wrong, and up­on check­ing, they found Maleek ly­ing on the ground out­side, bleed­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. He was wear­ing a pair of box­ers and black three-quar­ter pants when he was gunned down.

Res­i­dents alert­ed po­lice, and of­fi­cers ar­rived to find Mar­loon dead in­side and a bad­ly in­jured Ro­driguez ly­ing on the bed, alive and beg­ging for help. She was tak­en to the St James Med­ical Com­plex, where she was treat­ed but suc­cumbed to her in­juries around 10.35 pm. Mar­loon and Maleek were de­clared dead at the scene.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands it was Mar­loon’s oth­er son who re­turned home around 11 pm and found the bod­ies and alert­ed rel­a­tives and neigh­bours.

Mar­loon and Ro­driguez had both been em­ployed with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) as labour­ers for over ten years.

Po­lice, mean­while, are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the the­o­ry that Mar­loon’s oth­er son was the per­son the gun­men were look­ing for.

They were un­able to con­firm that the teen and a friend were re­spon­si­ble for cir­cu­lat­ing a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts with­in re­cent weeks, threat­en­ing an in­di­vid­ual be­lieved to be the leader of a gang in the area.

Guardian Me­dia was told the friend had been beat­en last week and al­so threat­ened by mem­bers of the gang, who had sent a mes­sage to Mar­loon’s son that he would be next. It is be­lieved that, as a re­sult, Mar­loon had sent his son to stay with friends and fam­i­ly in a bid to keep him safe.

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, po­lice pa­trols have been in­creased in the area. One se­nior of­fi­cial as­sured, “The com­mu­ni­ty’s com­fort is our main con­cern at this time. We want to re­as­sure them that it is safe for them to move around, and we are hop­ing our in­creased pres­ence will bring a re­newed sense of se­cu­ri­ty and com­fort to the area.”

Rel­a­tive: This hor­ror is unimag­in­able

A fe­male rel­a­tive of the mur­dered cou­ple spoke with re­porters at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day. She mourned the sud­den deaths as she said, “Mar­loon was a typ­i­cal per­son. Any­thing you ask of him, it didn’t mat­ter. He would go to the ends of the earth for yuh.”

She said while he was not per­fect and had “lit­tle squab­bles” like all adults, “it was noth­ing to cause this form of sense­less killings.”

Maleek was de­scribed as “slow and not aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined,” but de­spite this, she added, “He was good with his hands.” Maleek had at­tend­ed the Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary School and lat­er Ser­vol, where he dropped out of class­es.

She claimed Maleek had “now been try­ing to fig­ure him­self out.” She added, “He was learn­ing a trade; he was do­ing ma­son­ry. Is not like he was sit­ting down home and play­ing games the whole day. The fa­ther got him a job so he could have mon­ey com­ing in, not to be out on the streets. He was a typ­i­cal teenag­er, mak­ing mis­takes; he wasn’t per­fect.”

Strug­gling to find the words as she last saw the trio around 9 pm on Sun­day and they were good. The griev­ing woman ac­cused of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau and dis­trict CID of act­ing in an un­pro­fes­sion­al man­ner at the mur­der scene as they dis­missed the fam­i­ly’s pain and an­guish.

She said the area was not known for these types of killings, which had left them scared, anx­ious and con­fused.

“Peo­ple keep say­ing gang, gang, gang, but they were not in any gang. The killing was ex­e­cu­tion style, and what’s hurt­ful enough is that even if is one they go­ing to kill, one per­son, they lit­er­al­ly erad­i­cat­ed a whole fam­i­ly, a whole gen­er­a­tion.”

Reel­ing from shock that three mem­bers of the fam­i­ly had been wiped out in the at­tack, she added, “We are so scared, we don’t know if the re­main­ing son will be safe now. I don’t know if they will make a tack back. I do not know if we de­cide to bring him home to stay by us if they will come for us.”

She lament­ed the hard­ships Mar­loon’s moth­er had en­dured to raise her chil­dren, adding the hor­ror “is unimag­in­able.” She said killings such as these had now be­come the norm, as “noth­ing does ever come out of it even if they in­ves­ti­gate. No in­for­ma­tion is al­ways gang.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, the area ap­peared to be qui­et as some el­ders sipped al­co­hol and re­mem­bered the vic­tims as good peo­ple who did not in­ter­fere with any­one.

MP: Crime is a con­cern to me

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga—in whose con­stituen­cy the mur­ders oc­curred—said while the area has large­ly been spared by out­breaks of gun vi­o­lence, Mon­day’s killings had un­der­stand­ably left the com­mu­ni­ty shak­en.

In a brief in­ter­view, he told Guardian Me­dia, “Any sort of crime is of re­al con­cern to me.”

De No­bri­ga, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter, said he had spo­ken to Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land, whose port­fo­lio in­cludes spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), and they would be mov­ing to meet with res­i­dents in the area soon. While the date and time were yet to be de­cid­ed, de No­bri­ga ex­plained the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to “re­as­sure the com­mu­ni­ty about what the re­sponse is go­ing to be in terms of the po­lice pres­ence and al­so ad­dress oth­er is­sues such as in­fra­struc­ture.”

Ad­mit­ting he was still try­ing to come to terms with the in­ci­dent, the min­is­ter said the feed­back from res­i­dents will de­ter­mine the need for fur­ther mea­sures.

As was done in Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, fol­low­ing a mass shoot­ing back in May in which four peo­ple were killed, de No­bri­ga said there would be an in­creased pres­ence of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.