Trinidad: Fourth victim in `hit’ dies, drug link being explored

(Trinidad Guardian) While homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing a drug link in Tues­day’s quadru­ple mur­der in Ran­cho Que­ma­do, some in­for­ma­tion point to a hit or­dered on the life of one of the vic­tims, An­to­nio Alexan­der.
But de­tec­tives said the in­quiries are in its ear­ly stages and they will be ex­plor­ing all an­gles in solv­ing the shoot­ings of Alexan­der, 28, of Clax­ton Bay, Shaquille Dot­tin, 21; Jabari To­by, 17 of Pa­lo Seco and Alafia Au­gus­tine, 17 of Alexan­der Vil­lage, San­ta Flo­ra. 
While it was sug­gest­ed that the hit on Alexan­der was or­dered from prison, in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so sus­pect that he had a hand of last week’s mur­der of Cindy Joseph and Kadeem Eli­jah.
Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, five men were seat­ed in a sil­ver wag­on at a house op­po­site the Ran­cho Que­ma­do Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, at around 6 pm Tues­day when two gun­men got out of a Nis­san AD Wag­on and sprayed the car with bul­lets, killing Dot­tin, To­by and Alexan­der in­stant­ly. Au­gus­tine was able to crawl out of the car and he was tak­en to the Siparia Dis­trict Health fa­cil­i­ty where he died about 30 min­utes lat­er. The gun­men then drove their wag­on to an­oth­er area in Ran­cho Que­ma­do and set it ablaze. Both wag­ons were tak­en to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit in Cu­mu­to for pro­cess­ing.
Erin po­lice re­spond­ed along with de­tec­tives from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions combed the area for the killers, who were long gone.
They lat­er found the dri­ver of the wag­on, who is from Diego Mar­tin.

He told them that he was hired to take Alexan­der from Ran­cho Que­ma­do to the St Mar­garet’s Po­lice Sta­tion in Clax­ton Bay, where he had to sign a book as a con­di­tion of bail. Alexan­der was be­fore the Cou­va Mag­is­trates’ Court, ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to mur­der a rel­a­tive. It was be­lieved the wag­on fol­lowed the dri­ver to the apart­ment where Alexan­der re­cent­ly be­gan stay­ing. Af­ter pick­ing up the men, he drove the car in­to a neigh­bour’s yard to turn. He no­ticed the gun­men ap­proach­ing and ran away. The car even­tu­al­ly hit a col­umn, mak­ing it easy for the gun­men to hit their tar­gets.
An oc­cu­pant of the house where the mur­ders hap­pened said sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clud­ing chil­dren, were at home at the time of the shoot­ing. One woman was walk­ing in­to the yard when she heard au­to­mat­ic weapons fir­ing and ran back in­to the house. No one was hurt, but the trau­ma­tised fam­i­ly has since left their home.
At the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, Alexan­der’s rel­a­tive ad­mit­ted that he was a trou­bled per­son, but was lov­ing to his fam­i­ly.
“An­to­nio was bad and I’m not ashamed to tell any­one he did not take mess from any­one, not even the po­lice. But he loved me and his sis­ter… Peo­ple blame par­ents for what chil­dren do be­cause we can lay down the rules and take them to church. Chil­dren are born with their own minds. Once a child makes up their minds to do some­thing they will do it,”  the rel­a­tive said.
As for Dot­tin, the rel­a­tive said he was a ma­ma’s boy and did every­thing legal­ly.
At Au­gus­tine’s home yes­ter­day, his moth­er An­to­nio Mor­gan could bare­ly talk be­cause of grief. How­ev­er, his sis­ter Cher­nice did ad­mit that he had a trou­bled past and got in­to trou­ble of­ten. A form four stu­dent of the Siparia East Sec­ondary School, he was ex­pect­ed to leave and en­rol in the My­Part pro­gramme in the com­ing months. But Cher­nice said her broth­er was nev­er ar­rest­ed. On Tues­day, he did not go to school but left home around 7 am. He did not tell his moth­er where he was go­ing. He was ex­pect­ed to meet To­by, his close friend.
“It looked like it was a set up be­cause my broth­er and the next per­son who was dri­ving the car ran. But it was on­ly my broth­er that got shot and they (killers) nev­er found the per­son (dri­ver) who got out the car. We don’t know who that per­son is,” Cher­nice said.
At To­by’s home, his un­cle Richard said his death prob­a­bly came be­cause of the com­pa­ny he kept. He said his nephew was a cool per­son who didn’t in­ter­fere with any­one.
“As far as I know, he was home all morn­ing but he went down by his cousin (Dot­tin). When he went down there, his niece was sup­posed to go plat his hair with the same car that they were killed in. She didn’t come, but he thought that he would take a ride in the same car. Next thing an­oth­er car came and block them and they got shot up,” To­by said. 
He said the own­er of the car lived in the area, but he did not know much about the per­son.