Trinidad teen killed in St James liquor mart shooting

(Trinidad Guardian) There are now many ques­tions as to what ex­act­ly hap­pened at Singh’s Liquor Store at Bournes Road in St James which re­sult­ed in a 14-year-old boy, a pupil of St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, be­ing fa­tal­ly shot, while his friend land­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal af­ter he was al­so shot by a busi­ness­man yes­ter­day.

Ini­tial­ly, it was re­port­ed that the teenagers at­tempt­ed to rob the busi­ness­man of his cash sales.

How­ev­er, po­lice of­fi­cers late yes­ter­day re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that Luke Williams and an­oth­er teen went in­to the store to pur­chase al­co­hol when an ar­gu­ment broke out and Sandy threat­ened to re­trieve a gun from his car.

Guardian Me­dia was told by po­lice sources that the teenagers had at­tend­ed a “Zess­er” par­ty at Sea Lots on Sun­day night and were be­lieved to be high­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed.

Williams lived at Harp Place in East Port-of-Spain while the oth­er teen lived at Bath Street in the same area. Williams was the son of a woman po­lice of­fi­cer.

An ini­tial po­lice re­port stat­ed that at about 8.20 am the teenagers en­tered the store and said it was a hold-up. One of them was armed with a gun.

How­ev­er, they were shot by a busi­ness­man who be­came fear­ful and moved to save his life and de­fend the lives of his work­ers and cus­tomers in the store at the time.

Williams, who was dressed in cam­ou­flage pants, col­lapsed and died in the store with an undis­closed amount of cash in his hand.

Po­lice said the cash was part of the day’s sales that was de­mand­ed from the busi­ness­man mo­ments be­fore the shoot­ing.

The oth­er teen, who al­so at­tempt­ed to run away, col­lapsed on the pave­ment just out­side the es­tab­lish­ment. An am­bu­lance took him to the hos­pi­tal where he re­mained in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to press time.

But in an un­usu­al spin to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, po­lice of­fi­cers got an­oth­er ver­sion of the sto­ry. Of­fi­cers are hop­ing that the wound­ed teenag­er can give them in­for­ma­tion on the cir­cum­stances which led to the shoot­ing.

Po­lice sources said that one of the teens was de­tained for ques­tion­ing last year in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of Uber dri­ver Christo­pher Mo­hammed who was killed for his sil­ver Toy­ota Corol­la PDT 3352 on May 17, 2018.

Mo­hammed’s body was found in bush­es near Ethel Street, Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James, at around 11 pm that night.

Guardian Me­dia was told by res­i­dents in the area that Williams grew up at the near­by Quam­i­na Street and added that they were shocked over the re­ports of an at­tempt­ed rob­bery.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told that a fe­male rel­a­tive was point­ing blame at a male rel­a­tive for the “lifestyle and path” that Williams was in­volved in.

Ap­proached while clean-up op­er­a­tions were tak­ing place, a work­er said no one was in the state of mind to com­ment on the in­ci­dent.   “Right now we are clean­ing up the blood in­side and out­side, on the pave­ment here and try­ing to come to terms of what hap­pened. We are shocked and very much shak­en up,” the work­er said.

Dur­ing the cleanup, a uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cer stood guard out­side the busi­ness place.