Trinidad murder toll climbs to 62

(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.