Trinidad murder toll climbs to 62

Crime Scene Investigators search for spent rounds following the early morning shooting of three women along the Carenage Main Road on Saturday.

(Trinidad Guardian) The mur­der toll now stands at 62 fol­low­ing two more mur­ders on Sat­ur­day night.

The vic­tims were iden­ti­fied as Ri­car­do “Boney­man” Chew, 38, of Nel­son Street and Isa­iah Ram­per­sad, 18, of Mal­abar. An­oth­er man, iden­ti­fied as Akee­ba Ghan­ny, al­so of Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, was al­so shot and wound­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 9.30 pm Ghan­ny was on his way to his Nel­son Street apart­ment when he was shot in one of his arms. Po­lice said when they were re­spond­ing to that shoot­ing they no­ticed the body of a man in a drain. The man was lat­er iden­ti­fied to be Chew of Apart­ment 62-64. Po­lice said he was shot sev­er­al times about the body.

The scene was vis­it­ed by sev­er­al units of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Supt Gaf­far, In­sp Carr, Sgt Solomon, Ag Cpl Guer­ra and PCs Ho­sein, Fin­ley, Jobe, Smith and Lyn­don.

In the Mal­abar in­ci­dent, at about 9.20 pm Ram­per­sad, of Banyan Boule­vard, was lim­ing with a group of friends when a sil­ver B14 pulled up along­side them. Po­lice said one man came out opened fire on the group, then got back in­to the ve­hi­cle which sped off.

Ram­per­sad, Jeriel Samuel, 23, of Tirite Lane, Mal­abar and Shakir George, 20, of Belle View Av­enue, Ari­ma Old Road, Ari­ma, were shot and wound­ed. How­ev­er, Ram­per­sad was tak­en to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal and died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment. Samuel and George were up to press time ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tions at the hos­pi­tal. Po­lice re­cov­ered about 15 spent shells were re­cov­ered on the scene.

Ear­li­er Sat­ur­day, Cur­tis Franklyn, 28, of Ratch­et Hill, Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite, was at his home when some­one knocked at his door around 3 am claim­ing they were po­lice. Po­lice said when Franklyn open-ed the door he was con­front­ed by two gun­men dressed in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing.

Franklyn at­tempt­ed to run away but the gun­men opened fire on him be­fore es­cap­ing. Franklyn was tak­en to the St James In­fir­mary where he died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment. Po­lice are yet to de­ter­mine a mo­tive for the killing.

In an un­re­lat­ed shoot­ing in­ci­dent at about 8 am on Sat­ur­day, three fe­males, in­clud­ing a teenag­er and a US cit­i­zen, were shot and wound­ed while in a car on their way to their re­spec­tive homes af­ter at­tend­ing a par­ty in Ch­aguara­mas.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the fe­males were pas­sen­gers of a ve­hi­cle that was trav­el­ling east along the West­ern Main Road, Care­nage, near L’anse Mi­tan Road, when gun­men ran out of a track in front of the ve­hi­cle and opened fire.

Kadi­ja Nurse, 17, from Mary­land, USA; Afisha Bona­parte, 22, of Bath Street, Port-of-Spain and Elaalyah Richards, 19, from Fifth Street, Beetham Gar­dens, were shot and in­jured.

They were all tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where they were treat­ed and ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tions.

Po­lice said they strong­ly be­lieve the dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle was the in­tend­ed tar­get. He es­caped in­juries.