Trinidad: Three shot dead

(Trinidad Guardian) Three men were shot and killed and three oth­ers in­jured in four sep­a­rate shoot­ing in­ci­dents across north Trinidad yesterday.

The first shoot­ing oc­curred af­ter 2 am when 20-year-old Ka­reem Tay­lor, of Trou Macaque Road in Laven­tille, was at­tacked near his home. Tay­lor was shot sev­er­al times and died on the scene.

Al­most four hours lat­er, homi­cide de­tec­tives were sum­moned to First Trace, Main­got Road, Tu­na­puna af­ter an­oth­er mur­der.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, res­i­dents heard a vol­ley of gun­shots and when they checked they found 32-year-old Kevin “Sweet­man” Fi­garo bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds. Po­lice be­lieve that Fi­garo was in his one-room house when a gun­man en­tered the prop­er­ty and shot him as he slept.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether Fi­garo’s mur­der was linked to that of 34-year-old fel­low res­i­dent Chir­von Brown, who was killed, last Mon­day.

The third mur­der oc­curred at Pi­o­neer Dri­ve, Sea Lots, around 3 pm. The vic­tim, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Ronald “Tall Man” Joseph, re­port­ed­ly left home to take a bath at a stand­pipe in the com­mu­ni­ty when he and a friend were am­bushed by a gun­man who shot them sev­er­al times. The gun­man then got in­to a ve­hi­cle and it drove away.

Joseph died on the scene, while his friend, who was not iden­ti­fied, up to late yes­ter­day, was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. He re­mained ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

Po­lice sources said that the ve­hi­cle that was re­port­ed­ly used in the shoot­ing was found aban­doned on Pic­ton Road in Laven­tille, short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Po­lice be­lieve that Joseph may have been tar­get­ed by mem­bers of a ri­val gang.

Mean­while, three men were wound­ed af­ter a brazen shootout be­tween ri­val gangs in Mt Lam­bert, around 2 pm.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing sev­er­al gun­shots.

When they checked they saw a car idling at the side of the road with three men suf­fer­ing from with gun­shot wounds out­side. The men, who were not iden­ti­fied by po­lice, were tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope. They re­main ward­ed, up to late yes­ter­day.

Eye­wit­ness­es, who were lim­ing at a near­by bar, told po­lice that the car was be­ing pur­sued by an­oth­er car and oc­cu­pants of both ve­hi­cles were shoot­ing at each oth­er.

The dri­ver of one ve­hi­cle stopped af­ter he was wound­ed in the shootout.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were ex­pect­ed to in­ter­view the men af­ter they were giv­en the all clear by doc­tors, last night.

The killings raised the num­ber of peo­ple killed for the year to 260. Au­top­sies are ex­pect­ed to be per­formed on all three vic­tims at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James, on Mon­day.