(Trinidad Guardian) A Morvant teenager was gunned down on Thursday night, after the killers reportedly mistook him for a relative.
And a reprisal shooting hours after left one man dead and two others hospitalised.
Marlon Stewart, 14, of Upper Romain Lands, Morvant, was shot around 8.15 pm, as he was standing outside a neighbour’s house.
Stewart was said to have been liming with a group of men from the area, when it is alleged three gunmen emerged from a grassy track a short distance away and opened fire on the group.
As the group began running, the gunmen continued firing at the teenager.
Even though residents alerted police about the shooting, it was Stewart’s grandmother, Lydian Stewart, who later found his body.
Struggling to accept what had happened yesterday, Stewart’s grandfather, Alphaus Bruce, said while the family had heard the gunshots, they never once thought it could have been him.
Speaking with reporters as he stood in the front porch of his Morvant house, Bruce recalled urging Stewart to come inside on Thursday night.
He said, “I sit down right here…I say time to come inside and he say ‘grandpa, I coming now’.
“As I lie down, the whole place blaze up. This whole house shake up…it shake up.”
Begging for answers, he questioned, “Who want to kill my grandson? He don’t do nobody nothing…he don’t do nobody nothing.”
Claiming there were three other people present with Stewart at the time of the shooting, he asked, “How three disappear and he alone stay there?”
Bruce added, “Is something more than that, so the three gone and after the three gone, they take him out one time…oh God.”
The woman, who had raised Stewart as her own son, explained that when his elder brother had made certain choices, the two were given a choice to change and remain with the family, or return to their mother’s house.
While the older boy opted to return to their mother, Stewart chose to remain with the family.
Having passed exams for Morvant Laventille Secondary School in September, the grieving woman said the family had been saving up to get Stewart’s uniform, shoes and books – and had taken a decision for him to begin school in January.
Pointing to the surrounding houses, she added, “He have his little friends and them…so we does give him a time to come inside right, so we does let him close the gate, so when is 9 o’clock, everybody inside.”
She said the entire family was inside on Thursday night but Stewart was outside as normal when she began to hear what sounded like firecrackers going off.
Shortly after, one of her daughters began bawling and yelling that Stewart had been killed.
