(Trinidad Guardian) Isaiah “Oopsie” Commissiong was celebrating his 20th birthday on Christmas Day, when he was followed by his attackers and gunned down as a group of men were playing a game of football at Phase 6 in La Horquetta yesterday.
Police said shortly after 1 pm, Commissiong had just left Phase 7 and was walking along Phase 6, near the La Horquetta Recreation Ground, when he was ambushed by gunmen.
Commissiong attempted to run away but collapsed in the Savannah where he died near a group of men who were playing a football game.
And in a strange twist to the incident, a woman police officer responding to the scene shot a man after he shot her during an altercation.
The police officer was shot in the abdomen and up to late last evening was at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Centre in Mt Hope, where she was carded to undergo surgery.
Acting ACP Wayne Mystar confirmed this aspect of yesterday’s incident to Guardian Media at the scene, noting that the last update he had got to then was that the officer’s condition was listed as serious but stable.
“The information is very sketchy, but we know that we can confirm that there was a homicide and as a result police officers responded, and on arrival they would have observed a crowd gathered and there was an altercation among the crowd. The police officers attempted to quell the crowd, as a result a woman police officer was shot and the person who shot the woman police officer was also shot and both were presently at hospital,” Mystar said.
An initial police report stated that at about 1 pm, officers from the Northern Division Task Force Area South responded to a homicide at Phase 6, La Horquetta.
After arriving at the football field there, the officers a large saw a gathering of people. They attempted to cordon off the scene and noticed people fighting.
The officers attempted to quell the fights and during one of the fights, Garrick Thomas-St Clair, 49, of No.5 Phase 4, La Horquetta, allegedly burst the leg holster of acting Cpl Madeira’s service-issue pistol, grabbed the weapon and began firing in the direction of acting woman Cpl Cudjoe-Joseph.
Cudjoe-Joseph was shot in her stomach and raised an alarm. WPC Smith reacted instinctively and shot the man with the weapon.
Cudjoe-Joseph and the man were taken to the Arima Health Facility, where the female officer was attended to and transferred to the EWMSC for further treatment.
At about 2.37 pm, Thomas-St Clair was pronounced dead by Dr Ironside.
Northern Division Sr Supt Kerwin Francis yesterday told Guardian Media that the incident will be thoroughly investigated. He noted, however, that the police had managed to bring killings in the community down.
“Traditionally, the area was ridden with a lot of homicides. With the advent of the measures we had put in place, those homicides went down and we came in with our social intervention programmes, the station councils and the community meetings, so this event itself is some sort of anomaly that occurred and I’m certain that the police will be continuing our investigations into this matter,” Francis said.
He also assured that there are 24-hour police patrols in conjunction with soldiers and the Inter-Agency Task Force.
Community activist/teacher Rhonda Jones, who was on the scene, said news of the Christmas Day killing brought her to tears. She said for several years she had been fighting for “positive stuff in the community.”
“We use this same field here to do a homework programme, also for cricket and athletics for children seven to 17.
“We focus on the youths to give them positive choices and we have been lobbying to get this field fixed, an erection of a fence and nets that were destroyed. It is saddening to know that on Christmas Day I have to be in tears,” Jones said.
“I’m calling on the powers that be, we cannot afford to keep losing our young men and women like this. We need for them to come into the community now, not only at election time. Let them get involved now and fix what needs to be fixed.”