(Trinidad Guardian) Pandemonium broke out in Morvant on Tuesday evening when two gunmen opened fire on a crowded basketball court, leaving two children, aged 9 and 11, seriously injured, with the nine-year-old boy fighting for his life at hospital after being shot in the head. The shooting incident also left one man dead and another wounded.
According to the police, around 6.40 pm, a car stopped at the entrance to the basketball court in Mon Repos and two gunmen emerged and began shooting in the direction of Morvant resident Eusibio Roberts and another man he was standing next to.
Police said as Roberts, 49, fell to the ground, the gunmen walked up and stood over him, continuing to fire.
One resident yesterday said, “When they done…his head was mash up…it had nothing, it was gone.”
A total of 31 projectiles were later recovered at the scene.
Roberts, a father of five, worked as a ward supervisor at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope.
The gunmen then turned and started shooting at Roberts’s friend, a 37-year-old unemployed man of Boundary Road, San Juan.
The man was shot in the chest but ran through the basketball court with the gunmen continuing their pursuit and shooting indiscriminately.
As the gunmen fled the area in the waiting car, residents who ran and hid ventured out and found a nine-year-old boy of Williams Avenue, Laventille Extension, Morvant, on the roadway bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head. An 11-year-old boy of Laventille Extension, Morvant, was also lying in a drain with a shot in the right leg. Both children were rushed for urgent medical care.
Yesterday, police said the nine-year-old boy remained in critical condition at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope. The 11-year-old, who is being treated at the same facility, was said to be stable.
When Guardian Media visited Mon Repos yesterday, the normally busy area was quiet and the streets devoid of children who would usually have been playing outside during the school vacation.
Playing cards were seen strewn on the ground where they had been dropped when the shooting began.
Some of the elderly men in the community declined to talk, preferring to sip their drinks as they watched carefully. A few went back inside their homes when approached by the media.
However, the relatives of the 11-year-old boy who was shot expressed their hurt and trauma about the incident. They asked for his name not to be released and also preferred not to reveal their identities.
They said the shooting incident was the second time gun violence had pierced their family.
In April 2019, relative Kareem Garcia, 27, an uncle of th
