(Trinidad Guardian) Three men are dead and a fourth was wounded after gunmen stormed a house in Matura early on Sunday morning.
While police are continuing enquiries into the attack, relatives suspect it was a robbery, as the attackers were overheard demanding cash and valuables before murdering the trio.
Police said cousins Malcolm Richardson, 21, Andre Meloney, 20, and Sherwyn MacFallen, 17, were asleep at their family’s Mendoza Street home at 1.10 am when gunmen entered the house through the back door.
The trio were awakened and gunned down despite pleading with their killers for mercy.
A 30-year-old man who was in the house at the time was also shot twice in his chest by the attackers who then ran away.
Matura police were called in and they took the wounded man to hospital, where he was treated for a collapsed lung. He remained warded in stable condition last night.
At the family’s home yesterday, Whitney Sookdeo, the sister of Richardson and cousin of Meloney and MacFallen, said she was about to take a swim in the family’s pool at the front of the property when she heard two gunshots but originally thought it came from the neighbour’s home.
On checking the security camera feed in a parlour at the front of the home, she saw two gunmen and immediately tried to escape.
“I hide behind some blocks, and I hear more gunshots and my brother and them bawling. I put a crate and jumped over fence ran onto the road and straight to the police station,” she said.
“I ran non-stop but then I reached the junction and asked a guy on a bicycle, I told him I couldn’t make to get to the police station. By the time I got back there the police van was driving into our street.”
Sookdeo said while she did not know her brother or cousins to be involved in anything illegal, she was told by another relative the gunmen were heard demanding cash.
“When the killers came in my brother’s room, someone said they were asking him for the gold and the money. It seems to be a robbery.
“My brother (Malcolm) told them, ‘Look d bag take what you want,’ and they still shoot him in his head.”
Sookdeo said the gunmen cut a hole through a wire fence to enter the property, noting that they walked through a neighbour’s yard to get there.
She added that during the attack, one of the relatives tried to escape the house by running through the backyard but accidentally came face to face with the gunmen.
“When I looked at the footage, I saw him begging them. When he jumped through the window, he met them at the back. He tried to escape but instead ran into them.” Reflecting on the panic she felt and how narrowly she escaped death, Sookdeo likened her experience to what occurs in a movie, adding she did not feel like herself even hours after the murders.
She also said the spate of violence had left her shaken and she no longer felt safe in the community.
Sookdeo said MacFallen’s mother—her aunt—died sometime ago and she cared for the teen herself. She said he recently finished his education at the Matura Secondary School and had intentions of enrolling in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
MacFallen, she said, walked with a limp due to a pelvic injury years ago.
One relative who asked not to be named said the entire family was uneasy after the attack, especially when unfamiliar vehicles drove past the house.
“It isn’t an easy thing, these guys were sleeping when this happened. You aren’t even safe in your own house anymore and it throw the whole neighbourhood off.”
Police from the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region II are continuing enquiries.
The murder of the cousins was the latest flare-up of violence in the Eastern Division, over the past 72 hours.
On Friday night, two women and a man were shot and wounded near a parlour on Robinson Lane, Damarie Hill, Sangre Grande.
Hours later, 36-year-old Dominic Callender, alias ‘Saskie’, was shot and killed outside his Sapphire Drive, KP Lands, Valencia home.
On Thursday night, a man was shot while driving his silver Nissan Tiida through a forested part of Rio Claro.
Police suspect the spate of violence may be linked to a shooting attack on a man considered to be an underworld figure in the Eastern Division last week.
