T&T is at risk if claims by Desperlie Crescent, Laventille, residents that law enforcement officers executed three people last Thursday, People’s National Movement leader Dr Keith Rowley said yesterday. He made the comment after residents gave him more information, including over 18 spent shells from the crime scene, as he toured the community yesterday. He was accompanied by MP for the area (Port-of-Spain South), Marlene Mc Donald, other PNM MPs and officials and a group of soldiers and police. The community has been tense since the killing of reputed gang leader Dillon “Bandy” Skeete, 30, Joel Tash, 22 and Tremaine Thomas—a Jamaican national—were shot dead in an attack on Thursday.
Residents claim the men were killed by members of the army working in tandem with the police. They said the attack was a retaliation on Skeete for the killing of the soldiers’ colleague Lance Corporal Kayode Thomas, 32, on June 29 at Beverly Hills, Laventille. But acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams and the regiment’s public liaison officer, Capt Stefan Affonso, denied these claims. After getting first-hand information from residents yesterday, Rowley said he was of the view that the police were not handling the matter properly. “This matter warrants a very thorough investigation, not only of the killings but of what happened after,” he said.
He said Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, National Security Minister Gary Griffith and Williams must be made aware that “something very terrible has happened in Laventille and it requires a very thorough, conclusive investigation.” “If we never determine what happened here, we are far worst off than we were last Thursday morning,” Rowley said. He said regardless of who was killed the crime scene should have been secured to allow for a proper investigation, adding it was “unsatisfactory” that officers of state had not “taken control of the scene” immediately after the killings occurred. “We can’t make a judgment that some lives have value and some lives don’t and if there is a killing we are not concerned about finding out who did the killing,” Rowley said, adding Williams must explain how three people could be killed and the crime scene is not secured.
Admitting he had no idea who may have killed the people, Rowley said: “We cannot be comfortable if there are people out there who have this kind of firepower and they are prepared to use it in this way. The whole country is at risk.” During the tour, resident Wendell Scott told Rowley that he recovered 18 5.6 spent shells and one 12-gauge casing shortly after the killings. He said the crime scene was not secured by police, noting investigators claimed they had no tape to secure the area. Scott handed over the evidence to PC Smith of the Inter Agency task Force (IATF) on Rowley’s instructions. Skeete’s mother, Teleta Skeete, appealed to Rowley to do all he could to ensure that a proper investigation was done. She said the victims were put against a wall and shot dead by their attackers.
Surviving victim crawled to safety
One of the two men who escaped death after he was shot by masked gunmen on Thursday night at Desperlie Crescent, Laventille, said he felt his legs go numb as he ran from the shooters. Speaking from his bed at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital on Sunday, Christian “Ants” Huggins, 24, said he was with the group of men when a black Nissan X-Trail stopped and five fully armed masked men stepped out, identified themselves as police and made them kneel down. Huggins said as the gunmen began to “bathe down” (shoot) the eight kneeling men he ran off.
He said: “I make about 15 steps and then I just feel my legs and them go numb and I fall down.”
Determined not to die, Huggins said he dragged himself through some bushes and eventually made his way to the steps near a resident’s home, where he was helped and taken to the hospital.
Huggins was shot in the scrotums and complained of severe pain when he spoke exclusively with the T&T Guardian. He said he was told by doctors that his health would return “to normal.”
Two floors down from Huggins, the other survivor, Atiba Lewis, was nursing gunshots injuries to the forearm, stomach and shoulder. The T&T Guardian could not speak to Lewis but his mother, Patrice Lewis, said she wanted justice for her son’s shooting. Lewis said her son, like others who were shot, was innocent and had just stepped outside to collect a CD from one of the three murdered men. Lewis said she was sure the killers were members of the protective service.
